AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: COSMOLOGICAL CONCEPTIONS OF THE EASTERN HORIZON IN MESOPOTAMIA* CHRISTOPHER WOODS Chicago It was on the banks of the Hyphasis that Alexander’s march through Asia finally came to a halt. This was the furthest extent of his conquests, the terminal point of his campaign, the place where later would stand a brass column bearing the inscription ΑΛΕ Α Ρ Ε Αϒ Α Ε “Alexander stayed his steps at this point.”1 He would not cross that river. There would be no bridgehead on the * This paper has its genesis in two earlier studies that are also concerned with the Sun-god: “On the Euphrates,” ZA 95 (2005) 7-45; “The Sun-God Tablet of Nabû-apla-iddina Revisited”, JCS 56 (2004) 23-103. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Monica Crews, John Dillery, Jennie Myers, Martha Roth, Piotr Steinkeller, Theo van den Hout, and Irene Winter for their insights, suggestions, and assistance. I also thank P. Steinkeller for making available to me an early draft of his “Of Stars and Men: The Conceptual and Mythological Setup of Babylonian Extispicy”, in Biblical and Oriental Studies in Memory of W. L. Moran (Biblica et Orientalia 48), ed. A. Gianto (Rome 2005) 11-47—this seminal article influenced my thinking on this topic. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the dissertation of J. Polonsky (“The Rise of the Sun God and the Determination of Destiny in Ancient Mesopotamia” [University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. 2002]), which deals with much of the same evidence, but places it within a different conceptual framework (see also now J. Polonsky, “The Mesopotamian Conceptualization of Birth and the Determination of Destiny at Sunrise,” in If a Man Builds a Joyful House: Assyriological Studies in Honor of Erle Verdun Leichty, ed. A. K. Guinan, et al. [Leiden/Boston 2006] 297-311). Although her exhaustive study became known to me only after the initial drafts of this paper were written, I was able to incorporate a number of important citations from her work which have benefitted the present version. Portions of this paper were presented at the 50th meeting of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Skukuza, South Africa August 2nd, 2004). Citations of Sumerian sources often follow The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/); those of the Epic of Gilgameš follow A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, 2 vols. (Oxford 2003). The abbreviations used are those of The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and/or The Sumerian Dictionary of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. 1 As claimed by Philostratus, following the translation of F. C. Conybeare, Philostratus I: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Loeb Classical Library 16; Cambridge, MA/London 1912) 228-229 (II.43); on the reliability of Philostratus in this regard, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 JANER 9.2 Also available online – brill.nl/jane DOI: 10.1163/156921109X12520501747912 184 christopher woods far bank. Eight years had passed since crossing the Hellespont, but here, on the Indian frontier, his men reached the very limits of human endurance and refused to go on.2 And so Alexander was forced to make his ill-fated return to Babylon. He was not destined to reach the uncharted lands that lay beyond, lands that lay at the edge of the map, upon whose shores, classical geographers were sure, the waters of the cosmic river Ocean gently lapped. So astounding was Alexander’s halt that it reshaped the classical imagination. India had long been held to lie at the end of the earth, a land of marvels where reality gives way to fantasy and where empirical and mythical geography blur. But with Alexander’s campaign these vague notions took a more definite form with the Hyphasis becoming something of a ne plus ultra, a perimeter of the commonplace and the mortal beyond which lay the arcane and the divine. In the legendary tradition that inevitably grew from his conquests, Alexander’s failure to cross the Hyphasis came to symbolize a failed quest for immortality and heavenly wisdom—an allegory of man’s inability to transcend the limits of the human condition.3 The eastern frontier is where, in the Greek Alexander Romance,4 the Macedonian army becomes hopelessly lost in the Land of Darkness, to be rescued not by youthful bravery, but by the wisdom of a solitary old man; where the elusive waters of the Spring of Immortality flow (II.39); where Alexander learns of his untimely death at the oracle of Apollo in the City of the Sun (II.44); and where dwell the Naked Philosophers—Brahmins living lives of primitive simplicity, dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom—with whom Alexander engages in a losing battle not of arms, but of wits (III.5-6). This is a tale of the darkness of ignorance giving way to the enlightenment of knowledge, of immortality and divinely inspired wisdom that is only to be found beyond the bounds of the known world.5 note the comments of P. Green, Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 21992) 411. 2 Green, Alexander of Macedon 409-410. 3 On the rise of the Alexander romantic tradition, see J. S. Romm, Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction (Princeton 1992) 109-120. 4 Citations following R. Stoneman, The Greek Alexander Romance (London 1991). 5 And it is a tale that would be repeated and embellished by Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana. The hero, a latter-day Alexander in the form of a mystic, succeeds in crossing that symbolic terminus, the Hyphasis, his experiences with the wonders of the east culminating in his interview with an Indian at the edge of the world 185 The Alexander tradition recasts history with a fantasy that is invariably conjured up by thoughts of the ends of the earth. Indeed, no region of the cosmos plays upon the imagination like the horizon; seemingly approachable, but ever distant, it is the great divide between day and night, between what is known and what is unknown. It is a liminal space that for many cultures, as for the Greeks, is removed from the laws that govern the natural world, not subject to the constraints of space and time, a region populated by fantastic creatures that can only exist beyond the map. In Egypt this is the realm of Aker, guardian of the mountains of sunrise and sunset, the traditional points of access to the Netherworld. As the manifestation of the polarity inherent to the horizon, Aker is commonly depicted as two opposing lions or sphinxes, who, facing west and east, bear the respective names Sef and Tuau—‘yesterday’ and ‘today’—and look simultaneously to the past and to the future.6 As the personification of the Netherworld, more broadly, Aker was naturally associated with death, but also, in accord with his twin nature, with the Netherworld’s regenerative aspects, being closely connected to the Sun-god’s nightly journey and rebirth at dawn.7 So, too, in Mesopotamia the edges of the earth are shrouded in myth and it is the Sun-god who is master of this domain by virtue of his daily journey: “To the distant stretches that are not known and for uncounted leagues, Šamaš, you work ceaselessly going by day and returning by night.”8 The Mesopotamian horizon—ki dUtu è(-a) = ašar īt dŠamši “place of the rising Sun(-god)”9—is a region with its philosopher-king, Iarchas. (Romm, Edges of the Earth 116-120; see also G. Anderson, Philostratus: Biography and Belles Lettres in the Third Century A.D. [London/Sydney/ Dover, NH 1986]). 6 “Aker”, in Lexikon der Ägyptologie, vol. 1 (Weisbaden 1975) 114-115. 7 The primary sources for Aker are the New Kingdom Books of the Netherworld— the Amduat, the Book of Caverns and the Book of Earth (Book of Aker), see E. Hornung, Tal der Könige (Zurich/Munich 1982); idem, Altägyptische Jenseitbücher (Darmstadt 1997). 8 Ϟaϟ-na šid-di šá la i-di ni-su-ti u bi-ri la ma-n[u-ti ] dŠamaš dal-pa-ta šá ur-ra tal-li-ka u mu-šá ta-sa -r[a] (BWL 128: 43-44). 9 E.g., KAR 46: 15-16. As will be clear from the evidence presented below, the expression also occurs with kur/šadû, i.e., “mountain of sunrise/sunset.” On the Sumerian genitival compound as well as writings without the divine determinative, see J. Polonsky, “ki-dutu-è-a: Where Destiny is Determined”, Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, Part III: Landscape in Ideology, Religion, Literature and Art (HANE Monographs III/3, CRAI 44; Padova 2000) 90 nn. 8-9, with previous literature. 186 christopher woods own iconography and imagery, with a cosmography that straddles reality and myth. As in the Egyptian conception, it is the gateway to the Netherworld, the womb of the future, the point where the Sun-god emerges into the heavens bringing to fruition the coming day. It is at daybreak that fates are determined and judgments are decided on the horizon. This is the moment of manifestation—[ìne]-éš dUtu è-a ur5!(GÌRI) hé-en-na-nam “Now, as the Sun rises, it is indeed so,” to quote a popular Sumerian turn of phrase.10 And, like its Greek counterpart—with which it has so much in common and with which comparisons are inevitable—the Mesopotamian horizon is intimately bound up with heavenly wisdom, immortality, and creation, from cosmogony to birth. Of Animals, Trees, and Insects: The Iconography of the Eastern Horizon The path of the sun defines the limits of the Mesopotamian world, d Utu è-ta dUtu šú-a-šè/ištu īt dŠamši adi ereb dŠamši “from sunrise to sunset.”11 In the cosmological conception, in its broadest terms, the Sun-god, Utu-Šamaš, scales the eastern mountains in his daily ascent and emerges through the gates of heaven in a thunderous event that ushers in a new day. Cosmography clearly mimics geography, bound as Mesopotamia is to the east and southeast by the southern course of the Zagros. And as the Taurus and Amanus provide a northwestern perimeter, the mountain of sunrise has a cosmic counterpart to the west, the mountain of sunset.12 But these 10 A Mythic Narrative about Inana 45; this is a unique morphological variant of an expression usually written dUtu ud-dè(-e)-a (see Cooper Curse of Agade 257 ad 272; B. Brown and G. Zólyomi, Iraq 63 [2001] 151 and nn. 17-18). 11 SBH 47: 19-20. Other idioms referring to the horizon include zag-an-na (an-zag [ pā šamê, šaplan šamê ]) ‘edge/lower parts of heaven’, zag-ki(-a) ‘border of earth’, an-šár ‘entirety of heaven’, ki-šár ‘entirety of earth’, an-úr (išid šamê) ‘foundation of heaven’, as well as kippat mātāti ‘circle of the lands’, kippat er eti ‘circle of earth’, kippat tubuqāt erbetti ‘circle of the four corners’, kippat šār erbetti ‘circle of the four (regions)’—see W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (MC 8; Winona Lake, IN 1998) 234-236, 330-334. 12 Occassionally, the horizon is defined in terms of the mountains of sunrise and sunset, e.g., sig-šè igi mu-íl an-ùn-na kur dUtu è-ke4-ne igi bí-du8 nim-šè igi mu-íl an-ùn-na kur dUtu šú-ke4-ne igi bí-du8 “(Šukaletuda) looked down(river [i.e., east]) and saw the heavens of the land where the sun rises. He looked up(river [i.e., west]) and saw the heavens of the land where the sun sets” (Inana and Šukaletuda 149-150; also 101-102, 271-272; see Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 249); d Utu è-a-ta kur dUtu šú-a-šè “from the mountain of sunrise to the mountain of at the edge of the world 187 are symbolic, mythical locations as sunrise and sunset vary by nearly 56º during the course of the year. From the perspective of southern Mesopotamia, the sun rises over the central Zagros at the summer solstice, migrating south until it rises over the Persian Gulf at the winter solstice.13 Little is known of the mountain of sunset. Udughul identifies the Dark Mountain (hur-sag/kur gi6-ga), the mountain of sunset, as the remote birthplace of seven demons who were subsequently reared on the Bright Mountain (hur-sag/kur babbar-ra), the mountain of sunrise.14 Elsewhere, there is mention of a Mt. Buduhudug that carries the epithet nēreb dŠamaš <ana> dAya “the entrance of Šamaš to Aya,”15 and so too must be a name for the mountain of sunset since it is upon his return to the Netherworld that the Sun-god is reunited each night with his spouse.16 As in other cultures, there is a natural association in Mesopotamia between the west, the sun’s failing light, and death. Nergal and Ereškigal are master and mistress of the realm of the setting sun, bearing the respective epithets lugal ud šú and nin ki ud šu4.17 Incantations that compel ghosts to return to the Netherworld do so by commanding them to travel west, to the place of sunset,18 while figurines of ghosts ritually expelled from homes were buried sunset”—referring to the extent of Enlil’s domain (CT 42, 39 [85204] 26; ed. Cohen Lamentations 339-341). 13 See B. Alster, “Dilmun, Bahrain, and the Alleged Paradise in Sumerian Myth and Literature”, in: D. T. Potts, Dilmun: New Studies in the Archaelogy and Early History of Bahrain (BBVO 2; Berlin 1983) 45. 14 von Weiher Uruk 1 ii 2-5, 16-19; CT 16 44: 84-87, 98-101—see M. J. Geller, Evil Demons: Canonical Utukkū Lemnūtu Incantations (SAACT 5, Helsinki 2007) 167: 46-47; cf. KAR 24: 5-7—see George, Gilgamesh 493 n. 169, with previous literature. For further attestations of ki (d)Utu-šú, see Polonsky, “Rise of the Sun God” 275-276 n. 824. 15 MSL 11, 23: 5//von Weiher Uruk 114 i 5 (Hh.)—see George, Gilgamesh 863 ad 38-39, for discussion, previous literature, and duplicates. Further, note the equation hur-sag dUtu-šú-a-šè : ana šadî ereb dŠamši (Udughul IV 61)—cited in ibid. 864. 16 See M.-J. Seux, Hymnes et prières aux dieux de babylonie et d’assyrie (Paris 1976) 215-216; W. Heimpel, “The Sun at Night and the Doors of Heaven in Babylonian Texts”, JCS 38 (1986) 129. 17 Nergal: Temple Hymns 44: 464 (cf. dLugal sur7(KI.GAG) šú-a “lord who descends into the pit” [CT 25, 35 rev. 10; 36 rev. 16; 37: 12—see Tallqvist Götterepitheta 355; Temple Hymns 136]); Ereškigal: Steible NBW 2, 343: 2; 344: 2—šu4 is syllabic for šú. 18 E.g., ana ereb dŠamši lillik ana dBidu Ì.DU8.GAL ša er etim lū paqid “May he (i.e., the ghost) go to where the sun sets, may he be placed in the charge of Bidu, the chief-gatekeeper of the Netherworld” ( J. A. Scurlock, “KAR 267//BMS 53: A Ghostly Light on bīt rimki?”, JAOS 108 [1988] 206: 18-20; see also George, Gilgamesh 500 n. 192). 188 christopher woods at sunset, often facing west.19 And, of course, the Sun-god’s descent beyond the western horizon is intimately connected with the judging of the dead in the Netherworld at night.20 But it was the more auspicious eastern horizon with its promise of a new day that captivated the Mesopotamian imagination, a preoccupation that is reflected in the choice of the Sun-god’s spouse, Aya-Šerida—Dawn. Just before sunrise, gatekeepers21 thrust open the gates to the heavens in anticipation of the Sun-god’s ascent. In text, the sun’s youth at dawn is epitomized by the epithet šul d Utu “young man Utu” and his daily ascent into the azure heavens is portrayed as a series of images in lapis lazuli: ascending a lapis stairway, bearing a lapis staff, sitting upon a lapis dais, or donning a lapis beard that, in one instance, is described as “dewy,”22 a particularly striking image of dawn. These are the symbols of the night sky just prior to daybreak, fixed epithets not unlike Homer’s “Rosy-fingered dawn,” “Dawn the saffron-robed” and, notably, the purple steeds of Ushas, Dawn, in the Rig Veda.23 In one of the most recognizable scenes from the glyptic of the Sargonic period, Šamaš 19 J. A. Scurlock, “K 164 (BA 2, P. 635): New Light on the Mourning Rites for Dumuzi?”, RA 86 (1992) 64, who further points out that apotropaic figurines, on the other hand, faced east and were consecrated at sunrise; discussed by M. Huxley, “The gates and guardians in Sennacherib’s addition to the temple of Assur”, Iraq 62 (2000) 110-111 and n. 6. 20 See Heimpel, JCS 38, 148. 21 Described as “(the two) guards of heaven and the Netherworld” in the Elevation of Ištar: [dimmer min-na]-bi en-nu-un an-ki-a giš ig-an-na gál-la-ar d Nanna dUtu-ra gi6gi ud-da šu-ta-ta an-ni-ši-íb-si : ana DINGIR.MEŠ ki-lal-la-an ma-a - ar AN-e u KI-tim pe-tu-ú da-lat dA-nu ana d30 u dUTU u4-mu u mu-ši ma-alma-liš ba-šim-ma “For the two gods, the guards of heaven and the Netherworld, the ones who open the gates of An, for Sin and Šamaš, the day and night are divided equally” (TCL 6, 51 rev. 1-4; ed. B. Hruška, ArOr 37 [1969] 473-522); cf. the two protomes that manipulate the solar disk on the Nabû-apla-iddina tablet (BBSt., pl. 98 [no. 36]). 22 su6-na4za-gìn-duru5-e lá (Temple Hymns 27: 173; cf. 87 ad 173). References to simmilat uqnîm ‘lapis staircase’, šibirri uqnîm ‘lapis scepter’, barag-za-gìn-na ‘lapis dais’, and su6-na4za-gìn ‘lapis beard’ are collected and discussed by Polonsky, “Rise of the Sun God” 192-193, 196. 23 Note also the phrase an-za-gìn ‘lapis heavens’ discussed by Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 166-168, where the author further observes that Nisaba’s ‘Tablet of the Stars of Heaven’ (dub-mul-an) is made of lapis lazuli. Further, referring to the nether sky, note: dUtu an za-gìn-ta è-a “Utu, who comes forth from the lapis heavens” (Incantation to Utu 1; ed. B. Alster, ASJ 13 [1991] 37)—the cosmic identity between the Netherworld sky and the night sky is discussed below. On the metaphorical uses of lapis lazuli more generally, see I. J. Winter, “The Aesthetic Value of Lapis Lazuli in Mesopotamia”, in: Cornaline et pierres précieuses: la Méditerranée, de l’Antiquité à l’Islam (Paris 1999) 43-58. at the edge of the world 189 rises between the two peaks brandishing his distinctive šaššaru-saw. In some scenes lions atop the eaves serve as visual metaphors for this thunderous event,24 an image that is but one facet of a broader motif that contrasts the stillness and silent anticipation that night engenders with the bustle and clamor that announces a new day: “When dawn was breaking, when the horizon became bright, when the birds began to sing at the break of day, when Utu emerged from his cella . . .”25 In yet other seals, the setting of this scene is couched in the symbolic code of a subtler iconographic language. In figs. 1 and 2, two opposed recumbent bison replace the peaks of the mountain of sunrise. As the logogram for kusarikkum bears witness, i.e., GUD. DUMU.dUTU ‘Bison-Son-of-the-Sun-god’, bison, and with them the mythical bison-men, enjoy an intimate association with the Sun-god, being indigenous to the hilly flanks of the Zagros where the sun rises.26 Indeed, it is this aspect of the natural history of the east that accounts for the bellowing roar with which daybreak was associated, as well as the bovine epithets of the Sun-god that include gud, gud-alim, and am: ur-sag gud ha-šu-úr-ta è-a gù huš dé-dé-e šul dUtu gud silim-ma gub-ba ù-na silig gar-ra “hero, bull rising from (Mt.) Hašur, bellowing truculently, the youth Utu, the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically.”27 Of a different type is the visual gloss of location that appears in figs. 3 and 4—a E.g., R. M. Boehmer, Die Entwicklung der Glyptik während der Akkad-Zeit (UAVA 4; Berlin 1965) Abb. 409, 420. 25 ud zal-le-da an-úr zalag-ge-da buru5 ud zal-le šeg10 gi4-gi4-da dUtu agrun-ta è-a-ni . . . (Gilgameš, Enkidu, and the Netherworld 47-49; similarly, 91-93). Also note, among many other possible examples: ud-ba lugal-mu è-da-ni-ne an muϞunϟ-da-Ϟdúbϟ-dúb ki mu-un-da-Ϟsìgϟ-[sìg] “as my king (Utu) comes forth, the heavens tremble before him and the earth shakes before him” (Hymn to Utu B 13-14); en dumu dNin-gal-la . . . ud-gim kur-ra gù Ϟmuϟ-[ni]-ib-bé “the lord (Utu), the son of Ningal . . . thunders over the mountains like a storm (27-28); mušen-e á ud zal-le-da-ka ní un-gíd Anzumušen-dè dUtu è-a-ra šeg11 un-gi4 šeg11 gi4-bi-šè kur-ra Lu5-lu5-bi-a ki mu-un-ra-ra-ra “when at daybreak the bird stretches his wings, when at sunrise Anzu cries out, at his cry the earth in the Lulubi mountain quakes” (Lugalbanda 44-45). 26 Wiggermann Protective Spirits 174; on these two seals (figs. 1 and 2), see also P. Steinkeller, “Early Semitic Literature and Third Millennium Seals with Mythological Motifs”, Quaderni di Semitistica 18 (1992) 266, pl. 8 nos. 5 and 6. 27 Enki and the World Order 374-375. The association between the Sun-god and the bison is attested already in the ED Šamaš literary text, ARET 5, 6//IAS 326+342: na-mu-ra-tum dUTU GABA HUR.SAG i-gú-ul “the radiance of Šamaš ‘ate’ (his) wild bull(s) in front of the mountain” (following M. Krebernik, Quaderni di Semitistica 18, 76: C6.6). 24 190 christopher woods large horn atop a mountain that the Sun-god, or perhaps Moongod, scales. Quite likely, it belongs to the wild or Bezoar goat, Capra aegagrus, a species that is recognized for its majestic recurved horns and is also native to the slopes of the Zagros.28 Thus, like the bison, the Bezoar goat serves as a visual metonym for the mountainous eastern horizon, a claim that finds support in fig. 5 where two wild goats are depicted flanking a rising Sun-god. Flora also play a part in this iconography. A number of scenes of the rising Sun-god incorporate a particular conical tree (figs. 6-10). Its shape suggests a conifer of some type, although the occasional addition of an apex of three off-shoots may imply further, mythical influences (figs. 11-12). Likely, the tree of the seals is to be connected to the hašur/ ašurru-tree of text, a tree so closely associated with the rising Sun-god that it lends its name to the mountain of sunrise in literary sources: “Utu, as you emerge from the pure nether heavens, as you pass over Mt. Hašur . . . ”29 Identification of the hašur-tree is somewhat facilitated by the fact that few coniferous trees are indigenous to the central and southern stretches of the Zagros. One likely candidate, which accords well with the depictions in text and art, is the stately Indian Juniper, Juniperus polycarpos, a tall, upright-growing conifer that climbs high along the slopes of the Zagros.30 28 See already the comments of Boehmer, Die Entwicklung 73. On the identification with the Moon-god, see E. A. Braun-Holzinger, “Die Ikonographie des Mondgottes in der Glyptik des III. Jahrtausends v.Chr.”, ZA 83 (1993) 119-135. 29 d Utu an šag4 kug-ga-ta e-ti-a-zu-de3 kur ha-šur-ra-ta b[a]la-dè-zu-dè : dUTU ul-tu AN-e KUG.MEŠ ina a- e-ka šá-du-u a-š[u]r ina na-bal-kut-ti-ka (Akk.: “pure heavens;” T. J. Meek, BA 10/1, 66 and 68: 11-14; ed. ibid., p. 1—discussed by Heimpel, JCS 38, 143; George, Gilgamesh 864). Regarding Sum. an šag4, see the discussion of šag4-an-na below. Further, note: dUtu ha-šu-úr-ta Ϟèϟ-[àm] “(Ninurta) like Utu who came forth from the (Mt.) ašur . . .” (Ninurta A, Segment A 13); gud gišeren duru5 nag-a ha-[šu]-úr-Ϟra pešϟ-a “(Utu) bull who drinks among the dewy eren-trees, which grow on (Mt.) Hašur” (Utu Hymn B 10); šul dUtu en kur! giš ha-šu-úr-ra “Youth, Utu, lord of Mt. ašur” (VAS 2, 73: 12); see also Enki and the World Order 374-375 (quoted above) and Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave 228-229 (quoted n. 123). 30 Note the diverging definitions of the CAD sub ašurru ‘(a kind of cedar)’ and AHw. sub ašūrum, ašurru ‘eine Zypressenart’. According to M. Zohary, Juniperus polycarpos grows to a height of 20 m. and climbs to an altitude of 2,700 m. (Geobotanical Foundations of the Middle East, 2 vols. [Stuttgart/Amsterdam 1973] 351; 352 fig. 141 a [distribution]; 585 fig. 251 [photo]). J. Hansman, “Gilgamesh, Humbaba and the Land of the Erin-Trees”, Iraq 38 (1976) 29 refers to this tree as Juniperus excelsa, the so-called Greek juniper, a tree so closely related to Juniperus polycarpos that some botanists consider the two identical (Zohary, Geobotanical at the edge of the world 191 This same tree, Juniperus polycarpos, has been identified by Klein and Abraham as the referent of the Zagros-growing gišeren in Gilgameš and Huwawa.31 Indeed, in addition to the designation kur hašur, the mountain of sunrise is also, although less frequently, referred to as kur (šim) gišeren(-na) “mountain of (fragrant) erentrees,” e.g., dUtu kur šim gišeren-na-ta è-a-ni “as Utu rises from the mountain of fragrant eren-trees.”32 But, as has long been recognized, cedars, the generally accepted identification of gišeren, do not grow on the southern stretch of the Zagros, a problem that arises most frequently in the context of reconciling Gilgameš’s eastward journey to the eren-mountains in Gilgameš and Huwawa with his less problematic travels to the Lebanese erēnu-forest in the later Akkadian epic.33 A number of solutions have been proposed for this problem of historical geography, including Bottéro’s understanding of eren as, in origin, a generic term for any resinous or coniferous tree.34 If this is the case, there may have been no rigorous distinction, at least in early texts, between the broad designation eren and the narrower term hašur, a term that, presumably, referred particularly to those conifers that grow on the slopes of the southern Zagros, i.e., Juniperos polycarpos. With Mesopotamian classifications often being based on vague semantic associations without unique correspondences between object and label, it is quite conceivable that the two terms were used interchangeably to refer to the same tree.35 Having invoked Gilgameš, we cannot overlook that most famous of encounters to take place at the ends of the earth: upon approaching Foundations 351); M. B. Rowton, “The Woodlands of Ancient Western Asia”, JNES 26 (1967) 268 identified the hašur-tree with the Mediterranean cypress, Cupressus sempervirens horizontalis, and Mt. Hašur with the Eastern Taurus. See also the comments of J. Klein and K. Abraham, “Problems of Geography in the Gilgameš Epics: The Journey to the ‘Cedar Forest’ ”, Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, Part III: Landscape in Ideology, Religion, Literature and Art (HANE Monographs III/3, CRAI 44; Padova 2000) 66. 31 Klein and Abraham, CRAI 44, 66. 32 Inana E 27. For further attestations, see Heimpel, JCS 38, 144; Polonsky, “The Rise of the Sun God” 306-327. 33 Klein and Abraham, CRAI 44, 65-66, with previous literature. 34 J. Bottéro, L’épopée de Gilgameš (Paris 1992) 28 n. 2. 35 Note, in this connection, the tradition preserved in the Incantation to Utu where the opposition implies that kur eren refers to the mountain of sunset, and kur hašur to the mountain of sunrise: dUtu a-ab-ba igi-nim za-a-kam dUtu a-abba igi-sig za-a-kam dUtu kur eren-na kur ha-šu-ra za-a-kam “Utu, the upper sea is yours, Utu, the lower sea is yours, Utu, Mt. Eren (and) Mt. Hašur are yours” (Alster, ASJ 13, 43: 33-35); cf. Hymn to Utu B 10, cited above in n. 29. 192 christopher woods the gates of sunrise on Mt. Māšu—the “Twin Mountain,” recalling the dual mountain peaks of the glyptic—Gilgameš finds the way barred by a scorpion-man and scorpion-woman, who together “guard the sun at sunrise and sunset” (IX 45).36 But the scorpion’s association with the Sun-god is not limited to the epic. In the glyptic scorpion-men are often attested manipulating, or otherwise in association with, the winged solar disk (figs. 13-20).37 Nor is this an innovation of the first millennium. It is an old pairing, having roots that go at least as deep as the third millennium: in fig. 21 the ray-bedecked god is likely Utu-Šamaš, who is assisted by a scorpion-man in combat, and in fig. 22 a scorpion appears in the so-called ‘Sun-god in his boat’ motif. Corroboration is to be found in fig. 23, where the image is bordered by a scorpion that, with pincers raised towards heaven, supports the Sun-god wielding his šaššaru-saw; in fig. 24 an identically portrayed scorpion appears beneath a star, the image serving as a border motif for a scene of the Sun-god rising. Finally, in fig. 25, an OB seal in which text comes together with image, a scorpion appears below a legend bearing the inscription dUTU dA-a. Surely there is some underlying significance to the association of the Sun-god, the horizon, and the scorpion as there is with the bison, the wild goat, and the juniper tree. As with Janus-faced Aker, who looks to both day and night, the explanation lies in a polarity that both the horizon and the scorpion embrace. The horizon is the line separating life from death, and is, therefore, defined by both. On the far side are night, the Netherworld, and so death; on the near side are day, the reborn sun, and the promise of life.38 The scorpion is an obvious symbol of death and night. A stealthy and 36 A curious parallel presents itself in the Alexander tradition, where scorpions are similarly associated with the distant east. In the so-called Letter to Aristotle, Alexander writes of swarms of scorpions overcoming the Macedonian army while bivouacking in India, one of several unfortunate incidents during the Night of Terrors (Romm, Edges of the Earth 114). 37 The relationship between the Sun-god and the Scorpion-man in the first millennium is discussed by Huxley, Iraq 62, 120-123. 38 The duality of the horizon, embracing both night and day, explains the ostensibly contradictory lexical tradition which equates ganzir, the gate of the Netherworld (and so necessarily lying on the horizon) not only with kukkû ‘darkness’, but also with nablum ‘flame’ (see CAD K sub kukkû lex.; N/1 sub nablu lex.); cf. R. Borger, AOAT 1, 11; idem, WO 5 (1969-1970) 172-173; and W. R. Sladek, “Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld” (The Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D. 1974) 59-61. As discussed further below, the equation with nablum is likely based on the understanding that the sun bursts into flame at daybreak. at the edge of the world 193 deadly predator, the scorpion is a nocturnal creature that lives in the crevices of the earth. Indeed, it was likely this Netherworldly, chthonic quality,39 along with the scorpion’s long-standing relationship with the Sun-god, that earned the goddess Iš ara—symbolized first by the serpent (bašmu) and then the scorpion, and represented by the constellation Scorpio—the epithets wāšibat kummim “one who dwells in the (Netherworld) residence (of the Sun-god)” and, in connection with the Sun-god’s Netherworld activities, bēlet dīnim u bīrim “lady of judgment and divination.”40 But, paradoxically, the scorpion is, like the eastern horizon, also a symbol of life and rebirth. As a snake sheds its skin—an act heavy with symbolism—the scorpion regularly undergoes ecdysis or molting, casting off its exoskeleton and emerging substantially larger than before. Thus, as in other cultures, it is the natural biology of the scorpion that makes it a symbol of birth and rejuvenation in Mesopotamia. Indeed, it is this rejuvenative aspect that sheds light upon Iš ara’s role as a goddess of sex, for when Gilgameš exercises his prerogative of ius primae noctis he does so on “the bed that was laid out for Iš ara”41—a statement from the epic that is corroborated in text by the goddess’s epithet bēlet râme “lady of love”42 39 This association is already hinted at in Ur III offering texts in which Iš ara is connected with Allatum among other chthonic deities, e.g., AUCT 2, 97 iii 43f.; see D. Prechel, Die Göttin Iš ara. Ein Beitrag zur altorientalischen Religionsgeschichte (ASPM 11; Münster 1996) 26-31, 188. 40 YOS 11, 23 i 14 and BBR 87 i 6 respectively. In An = Anum III 281-282 Iš ara is counted among the entourage of Šamaš and Adad, while in I 201 and IV 277 she bears the title bēlet bīri “lady of divination.” On these epithets, as well as the relationship between divination and the Netherworld more broadly, see now Steinkeller, Biblica et Orientalia 48, 11-47. A close association with Šamaš is suggested already for the OB period by the fact that the šaššarum of Šamaš and the bašmum of Iš ara were together employed in oaths, e.g., ŠU.NIR ša dUTU ša-ša-rum ša dUTU ba-aš-mu-um ša Eš- ar-ra a-na ga-gi-im i-ru-bu-ma “the emblem of Šamaš, the saw of Šamaš, the snake of Iš ara came into the gagûm” (CT 2, 47: 18—rev. 1; see Prechel, Die Göttin Iš ara 39). 41 a-na dIš- a-ra ma-a-a-lum na-Ϟdiϟ-i-ma (Gilg. P v 196-197; George, Gilgamesh 178-179). 42 LKA 102: 12; ed. Biggs Šaziga 6. Note the early association of the scorpion as a symbol of the sex act in the Barton Cylinder ii 11-12; ed. B. Alster and A. Westenholz, “The Barton Cylinder,” ASJ 16 [1994] 15-46. The scorpion, as representative of both life and death is captured in the Nugal Hymn, where the gate of the Nungal’s prison—which, as discussed below, is paradoxically symbolic of both the Netherworld and the womb—is described as decorated with, or having the form of, a scorpion, i.e., a-sal-bar-bi gíri sahar-ta ím-ma ka ša-an-ša5-ša5-dam ‘its architrave? is a scorpion that quickly dashes from the dust, overpowering (all)’ (Nungal Hymn 16). 194 christopher woods and in image by the inclusion of scorpions in scenes that depict the nuptial bed (figs. 26-27). A possible derivation of the goddess’s name from the root š r ‘dawn’43 would show a regenerative solar aspect to be fundamental to her character, while an association with the horizon itself is made plain by her name dÍb-Du6-kug-ga ‘Fury of the Dukug’;44 as will be discussed below, Dukug, the bond of the Upper- and Netherworld, is the location par excellence of the eastern horizon. Furthermore, it is the scorpion’s connection with reproduction that accounts for the presence of a pair of scorpionpeople—of opposite sex—on Mt. Māšu, a conception that is also embedded in a Neo-Assyrian ritual that prescribes the fashioning of a large number of pairs of prophylactic figurines; however, only for the girtablullû does it call for the manufacture of one male and one female.45 Finally, we should not overlook one aspect of the natural biology of scorpions that speaks tellingly to this symbolic duality, namely, their cannibalistic mating practices of which the ancients may well have been aware—after a complicated mating ritual, coitus very often ends46 with the female killing the male, so uniting death with the reproductive act itself. The Babylonian oikoumenē ‘Known World’, Immortality, and the Path of the Sun A horizon dominated to the east and west by the mountains of sunrise and sunset is the most common conception of the edges of the earth in Mesopotamian sources. But it is not the only one. Gilgameš IX-X describes regions beyond Mt. Māšu: the Path of the Sun ( arrān Šamši ), where, in fact, the sun does not shine, the gemstone garden, the cosmic sea (tâmtu) and the waters of death (mê mûti ), and, across these waters, the realm of Ūta-napišti at pî nārāti “the mouth of the rivers.” These far reaches, as Šiduri admonishes Gilgameš, are the exclusive domain of the Sun-god: “Never, Gilgameš, has there ever been a crossing, and anyone who has come since the dawn of time has not been able to cross the sea. The crosser of the sea is See W. G. Lambert, “Iš ara”, RlA 5 [1976-1980] 176. An = Anum I 199. 45 Wiggermann Protective Spirits 14-15: 186-187, 52 (comm.). 46 Specifically, in nearly 40% of all cases by some estimates—see G. A. Polis and W. D. Sissom, “Life History”, in: G. A. Polis, The Biology of Scorpions (Stanford 1990) 161-172. 43 44 at the edge of the world 195 valiant Šamaš, other than Šamaš, who can cross?”47 This same sea, bearing the designation ídMarratu, is portrayed on the Babylonian Map of the World as beyond the mountains of sunrise and sunset, a cosmic river encircling the earth.48 What is at issue here is not, necessarily, an inherent contradiction in our sources, or evidence for an evolving tradition, as suggested elsewhere,49 but the mental map as conceived from different perspectives. For the Greeks the world consisted of two parts. There was the oikoumenē, the “known or familiar world”—“our world”—which, according to Romm, “constitutes the space within which empirical investigation . . . can take place, since all of its regions fall within the compass either of travel or of informed report.”50 And there are the unfamiliar regions beyond the oikoumenē, lands of which little or nothing was commonly known and which, therefore, lent themselves to myth and fantasy. Much like the Greek notion of the oikoumenē, the mountains of sunrise and sunset define the limit of the Mesopotamian known world. Cosmography is shaped by topography, with the Zagros, in particular, providing not only a considerable physical barrier, but bounding Mesopotamian culture as well, defining, in essence, the eastern horizon of the Mesopotamian “our world.” Like the Greek conception and maps of old that detail empirical geography, but assign the distant regions beyond exploration to the realm of fantasy—hic sunt dracones “Here be dragons”—the Mesopotamian world consists of the known and 47 Gilg. X 79-82. This admonition is not unlike the legendary council given to Alexander when the conqueror dares to speak of crossing unfathomable Ocean: “This is not the Euphrates nor Indus, but whether it is the endpoint of the land, or the boundary of nature, or the most ancient of elements, or the origin of the gods, its water is too holy to be crossed by ships” (A Greek epigram collected by Seneca the Elder in his Suasoriae; following Romm, Edges of the Earth 25-26). 48 For the Babylonian Map of the World, see Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 20-42; although not specifically labeled as the mountains of sunrise and sunset, this identification is suggested by the fact the limits of the continental earth were conceived as bordered by mountains (see Horowitz, Cosmic Geography, 331-332). 49 See Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 330. George, Gilgamesh 496-497, attributes this apparent discrepancy to a historical development in which an older cosmography that viewed the Zagros as the eastern horizon was replaced by a later view, based on empirical investigation, that knew of lands beyond the mountains. This solution, however, runs afoul of the fact that those who expressed the “older” tradition (e.g., the scenes of the Sun-god rising of Sargonic glyptic and OB references to the Sun-god emerging from Mt. Hašur) were well aware of regions beyond the Zagros, such as Elam and Melu a—indeed, they had greater contacts with the peoples beyond the Zagros than did their later counterparts. 50 Romm, Edges of the Earth 37. 196 christopher woods the unknown. Akkadian scenes of the Sun-god rising and references to the Sun-god rising from Mt. Hašur, all seeming to imply a world with a mountainous perimeter, focus upon the more mundane limits of the familiar world, the eastern horizon as viewed from the perspective of the Babylonian oikoumenē. The conception of the edges of the world captured in Gilgameš and the Babylonian Map of the World is broader and more ambitious, incorporating the mythical terra incognita that lay beyond the mountains of sunrise and sunset, the cosmic counterpart of the lesser-known and foreign lands beyond the Zagros. More than a contradiction, it is an expansion of the former notion. It is in this light that we must revisit the much-discussed cosmography of the Path of the Sun and the regions beyond described in Gilgameš IX-X. Most commentators have emended IX 39 so that Gilgameš’s interview with the scorpion-people takes place on the western horizon, at the mountain of sunset, rather than the mountain of sunrise; Gilgameš’s journey to Ūta-napišti would then proceed from west to east via what many assume to be a tunnel though the Netherworld.51 But there is no compelling reason for the emendation, no explicit mention of a tunnel, and no reference to the Netherworld in the extant text.52 Nor is it necessary to subject the claim that the scorpion-people, from Mt. Māšu, ana a ê Šamši u ereb Šamši ina arū Šamšīma ‘guard the sun at sunrise and sunset’ (IX 45), to an interpretation beyond what the text explicitly states.53 What is often missed—and what is the source of much confusion regarding this and the following passages—is that this mythical region, for which Mt. Māšu serves as gateway, represents a purposeful paradox, a place defined by diametrical opposition. It is a region where trees of precious stone bear fruit of jewels (IX 171-194), where sailors of stone navigate the Waters of Death, where a mortal man lives in immortality, where an alewife, contrary to the expectations of her profession, dons the veil (X 1-4), where the guardians consist of a male-female pair, half human half animal (IX 37-51), the latter represented by the scorpion, which, as previously discussed, is symbolic of both life and death. And it is a region, where, at See George, Gilgamesh 492-497, for a review of the previous literature discussing this and other interpretations of the Path of the Sun. 52 On this point, see also George, Gilgamesh 494. 53 Cf. George, Gilgamesh 492-493; Huxley, Iraq 62, 124-125; eadem, “The Shape of the Cosmos According to Cuneiform Sources”, JRAS ns 7 (1997) 193. 51 at the edge of the world 197 Mt. Māšu (again, “Twin Mountain,” the name itself expressing the notion of duality) the sun both rises and sets (IX 45). At issue is the phenomenon of coincidentia oppositorum, a cross-culturally observed mythological theme in which the paradox of divine and mythical reality is conceptualized as a union, and thereby transcendence, of contraries.54 The horizon—itself a paradox, a liminal space, a point of convergence between diametrical opposites—naturally lends itself to such a conception.55 Parallels are encountered in Classical sources. There are the Homeric Aithiopes, for instance, who are split in two, some residing at sunrise and some at sunset (Odyssey i 23-24), and, of particular interest in light of the description of Mt. Māšu, is the Hesiodic Tartaros, where it is claimed that the sun both rises and sets (Theogony 746-751).56 The passage detailing Gilgameš’s journey is unfortunately broken, and so any interpretation is necessarily speculative. However, as pointed out by George, it clearly concerns a race against the sun, taking place, apparently, over 12 double-hours, that is, a whole day.57 I contend that Gilgameš’s journey begins in the east, at Mt. Māšu, 54 See, in particular, M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion. Trans. Rosemary Sheed (Lincoln, NE/London 1996; originally published 1958 by Sheed & Ward, Inc. New York) 419-424. 55 The duality and coincidence of opposites that is implicit to the horizon makes, naturally, for a symbolic topos in literarature. For instance, Lugalbanda’s liminal state between life and death is described in terms of the rising and setting of the sun, e.g., ud šeš-me dUtu [giš]-Ϟnúϟ-a-gim mu-zi-zi-ia . . . Ϟùϟ tukum-bi dUtu šeš-me ki kug ki kal-kal-la-aš gù im-ma-an-dé ‘If our brother rises like Utu from bed . . . but if Utu summons our brother to the holy place’ (Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave 123-129). Similarly, when Gilgameš is rendered unconscious by Huwawa’s auras, his near-death state (sleep being the lesser counterpart of death) is described metaphorically in terms of sunset (kur ba-an-sùh-sùh gissu ba-an-lá an-usan še-erše-er-bi im-ma-gen ‘the mountains have become indistinct, shadows are cast across them; the evening twilight has come forth’ [Gilgameš and Huwawa A 78-79]), but the imagery also, and ultimately, draws upon the notion of the Netherworld as a place of rejuvenation and rebirth: dUtu úr ama-ni dNin-gal-šè sag íl-la mu-un-gen ‘proudly, Utu has gone to the bosom of Ningal, his mother’ (80). 56 See G. Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca, NY/London 1990) 237; idem, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore/ London 1999) 196; D. Nakassis, “Gemination at the Horizons: East and West in the Mythical Geography of Archaic Greek Epic,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 134 (2004) 215-233. 57 George, Gilgamesh 495. And so Gilgameš’s travel through this mythical space in a single day mirrors a trip across the expanse of the world, thus underscoring the theme of coincidentia oppositorum (compare the travels of Odysseus, in which the extreme west is equated with the extreme east, the island of Aiaie being paradoxically located in both the far west and the far east [see Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics, 237], as well as the travels of Lugalbanda [see n. 68]). 198 christopher woods and takes him farther east to the mythical lands beyond. Gilgameš arrives at Mt. Māšu at night, a fact underscored by his dream and prayers to Sîn (IX 8-29). The sun has not yet risen over the mountain of sunrise and a new day has not yet begun. The Path of the Sun, in this scenario, runs through the fantastic lands lying to the east, between Mt. Māšu and the shore of the cosmic ocean—it is so designated because these unchartered regions are traversed only by the Sun-god. Gilgameš crosses this expanse before Šamaš returns and rises once again over Mt. Māšu, that is, before the dawn of the following day. Gilgameš and the sun travel in opposite directions, starting out on their respective ways, likely just as day breaks on Mt. Māšu. They cross paths at some point late in the race, but with Gilgameš exiting the eastern end of the Path of the sun, at the gemstone garden on the shores of the cosmic ocean, before the sun returns to the western end on Mt. Māšu—[. . . it-t]a- i la-am dŠamši “[. . . he] came out before the Sun” (IX 170). One may object that the utter darkness that characterizes the Path of the Sun is inconsistent with Gilgameš and the sun crossing paths. But, as pointed out by Heimpel, the sun, as it emerges over the eastern mountains, is described as “flaring up,” i.e., Šamaš ippu —napā u being a verb commonly used to describe the fanning of an ember into flame. Conversely, when the sun dips beneath the mountain of sunset, the verb used is šú ‘to cover’, as in smothering a flame.58 Thus, during its journey from the mountain of sunset to the mountain of sunrise the sun was conceived as a smoldering ember, an understanding that explains why the Netherworld is dark despite the Sun-god’s nightly travel through it. This rationale also accounts for the mention of the north wind (IX 163) after nine double-hours59—the presence of the north wind, which at day break would re-kindle the sun, being a harbinger of dawn itself—as well as for Gilgameš repeatedly glancing behind,60 but seeing only darkness61—affirmation that Gilgameš was winning the race, for the sun had not yet reached Mt. Māšu and erupted into flame. Heimpel, JCS 38, 142. Heimpel, JCS 38, 142. 60 ana palāsa arkassa (Gilg. IX 141f.); on the reading palāsa, rather than pānassa, see George, Gilgamesh 495 n. 176. 61 šá-pak ek-le-tùm-ma i-ba-áš-ši nu-ru “the darkness was dense, and light was there none” (Gilg. IX 140f.). 58 59 at the edge of the world 199 A region of darkness beyond the Babylonian oikoumenē is also known from the Babylonian Map of the World, where a triangular region, nagû, to the northeast is labeled “Great Wall: 6 leagues in between where the Sun is not seen.”62 The designation is written only within this one nagû, but may equally apply to all the nagûs that radiate from the cosmic sea. A parallel is once again provided by the Alexander Romance, for, as previously mentioned, the Macedonian army finds itself in a region of impenetrable darkness in the uncharted regions of India. This is a motif in which enlightenment and achievement are symbolized by the dawn of a new day, and ignorance and travail by the preceding darkness of night—a motif that is captured in a historical omen of Sargon that reads “. . . the omen of Sargon, who went through the darkness and a light came out for him.”63 It belongs to the broader symbolism of the fundamental opposition between night and day, black and white. That it is an old literary device is shown already by Gudea, whose revelations come like daylight from the horizon (Cyl. A iv 22; v 19), whose night-time oracular vision (maš-gi6-ka [i 17])—a play upon ‘black kid’—is obscure, but whose subsequent inspection of a white kid (máš bar6-bar6-ra), at day break, brings clarity and a favorable omen (xii 16-17). More than a mere race to the ends of the earth, Gilgameš’s contest with the sun has a deeper cosmological significance. And it is largely a function of two characteristics of the eastern horizon, which will be discussed further below, namely, that it is here that time stands still and that fates are determined at dawn, ki dUtu è ki nam-tar-re-da “the place where the Sun-god rises, the place where fates are determined.”64 In short, the horizon lies beyond the Babylonian oikoumenē and, therefore, beyond the laws of nature that govern the known world. Gilgameš’s quest to circumvent the ultimate fate of mankind—death—requires him, as a prerequisite, to traverse the Path of the Sun before his fate is fixed at the dawn of a new day—a theme that is underscored in the following episode 62 BÀD.GU.LA Ϟ6ϟ bēru ina birit ašar Šamaš lā innammaru (Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 22: 18; see also ibid., 32-33, where it is noted that ‘Great Wall’ may refer to mountains). 63 . . . a-mu-ut ϞŠar-ruϟ-ki-in ša ek-le-tam il5-li-ku-ma nu-ru-um ú- i-aš-šu-um (V. Scheil, RA 27 [1930] 149: text B 16-17—see J. J. Glassner, RA 79 [1985] 124; Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 33). 64 Steible NBW 2, 343: 7-8; 344: 7-8. 200 christopher woods in which Gilgameš must cross the Waters of Death in order to reach the domain of the immortal Ūta-napišti. By winning the race, Gilgameš has succeeded in breaking free of the bonds of the Babylonian oikoumenē; he has bested the sun whose circuit orders space and regulates time. To transcend the limits of the known world, delimited by the eastern mountains, is to transcend the very boundaries of the human condition. It is the prerogative only of the gods and of mythical figures like Ūta-napišti, immortal, and Gilgameš, two-thirds divine. The idea that immortality and rejuvenation are to be sought in the remote east is, as mentioned at the outset, a theme central to the Alexander Romance. The east is also where, according to Ctesias, the mythical dog-headed Kunokephaloi dwell, the longest-lived of men.65 And it is a conception that is well attested in Mesopotamia as well, assuming various forms in the literary tradition. The eastern horizon is the place where the sun is renewed, where the new day is born, and so—as with the immortal and perpetually young Ushas, ‘Dawn’, in the Rig Veda—it is naturally here that rejuvenation and longevity are to be found. It is here in the remote, mythical east, ina rūqi ina pî nārāti “far away, at the Mouth of the Rivers” (XI 205-206) that the immortal Ūta-napišti is settled and it is here, within Ūta-napišti’s realm, that Gilgameš must dig a channel to pluck the plant of rejuvenation, šammu nikitti ‘Plant of Heartbeat’66 (XI 295), which grows deep in the Apsû. Like pî nārāti ‘Mouth of the Rivers’—the place where the two branches of the primeval river rise from the Apsû and mingle with the cosmic ocean—the Apsû itself lies to the east, being physically and, as will become clear in the following pages, functionally allied to the horizon. 67 Further, it Romm, Edges of the Earth 80, 82-120. Following the interpretation of George, Gilgamesh 895-896. Additionally, note that the black kiškanû-tree of the Apsû, its color a possible signifier of its Netherworld location, is claimed to have healing, or rejuvenative powers (kiškanû-incantation—see M. J. Geller, “A Middle Assyrian Tablet of Uttukkū Lemnūtu, Tablet 12”, Iraq 42 [1980] 23-51, idem, Evil Demons 169-171: 95-121; M. W. Green, “Eridu in Sumerian Literature,” [University of Chicago, Ph.D. 1975] 186-190). 67 In the kiškanû-incantation, Šamaš and Dumuzi are within the Apsû “between the mouths of the two rivers”—dal-ba-na íd-da ka 2-kám-ma : ina bi-rit ÍD.MEŠ ki-lal-la-an (M. J. Geller, Iraq 42 [1980] 28: 16', 18'; idem, Evil Demons 170: 102); see also n. 84 below. As for the easterly location of the Apsû, note that the term for Utu’s cella, agrun (kummu), is nearly identical with the Abzu and that it is in the Abzu that Utu meets Enki: èš Abzu ki-zu ki-gal-zu ki dUtu-ra gù-dé-za “the shrine Abzu is your [i.e., Enki’s] place, your Netherworld; it is the place where you greet Utu (Temple Hymns 17: 15-16). Steinkeller has connected this passage 65 66 at the edge of the world 201 is here, at the eastern limit of his journey, that Gilgameš is cleansed and refreshed, where Ūta-napišti gives him a robe for his return journey that promises to be perpetually new, a taunting symbol of the immortality of the eastern horizon that has eluded him. These aspects of the east are well known in Sumerian literature as well, for it cannot be coincidental that it is in the distant, eastern mountains that an exhausted Lugalbanda, near death, finds renewed strength—indeed, he attains super-human speed, a veritable rebirth.68 And a frustrated Gilgameš, realizing the inevitability of death and resolving to establish his everlasting renown in lieu of immortality, endeavors to do so in the east, searching for Huwawa in lands under the sway of Utu, journeying to kur-lú-tìl-la—“mountain where one lives”69—a reference either to Ziusudra,70 specifically, or, more likely and more profoundly, to the belief that immortality is to be found on the eastern horizon, so introducing the mortality theme that pervades the story and dominates the following speech to Utu (ll. 21-33) in particular. Finally, agreeing in the essentials with the later Akkadian epic, there is this account in the Sumerian Flood Story: An and Enlil, having decreed immortality for Ziusudra, with two Sargonic seals (Boehmer, Entwicklung Abb. 488 and 489), which depict Utu before Enki, who is portrayed within his watery shrine (Steinkeller, Quaderni di Semitistica 18, 258 n. 39). This conception is confirmed for the late periods by a NB ritual that identifies Šamaš as mud-an-na-[x] bí-[h]a-za-e-eš GIŠ.NÁ-an-na bí-tab : mu-kil [up]-Ϟpiϟ Ap-si-i ta-me-e nam-za-qí šá dA-ni7 “(Šamaš) who holds the lock of the Apsû, who keeps the key of Anu” (UVB 15, 36: 12; following CAD N/1 sub namzaqu lex.). As discussed below, further support is to be found in the notion that stars originated in the Apsû—see R. Caplice, “É.NUN in Mesopotamian Literature”, Or 42 (1973) 299-305. 68 Lugalbanda’s gift of super-human speed, bestowed by Anzu on Mt Hašur, allows him run as fast as the sun and the celestial sphere (ud-gim du dInana-gim ud 7-e ud dIškur-ra-gim izi-gim ga-íl nim-gim ga-gír ‘Travelling like the sun, like Inana, like the seven storms of Iškur, may I leap like a flame, may I blaze like lightining!’ [Lugalbanda 171-173; cf. 188-190]), and so he is able to cross seven mountain ranges and return to Uruk from Anšan in a single day, “by midnight, before the offering table of holy Inana was brought out” (gi6 sa9-a gišbanšur kug d Inana-ke4 nu-um-ma-tèg-a-aš [Lugalbanda 345]); cf. Gilgameš’s race against the sun and the travels of Odysseus (see n. 57). Similarly, in Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave, the hero’s rejuvenation is realized once he consumes the Plant of Life (ú nam-tìl-la-ka; cf. šammu nikitti ‘Plant of Heartbeat’ [Gilg. XI 295]) and Water of Life (a nam-tìl-la-ka), which are found on Mt. Hašur, enabling him to race over the hills like a wild ass, from nightfall until the coming of the following evening (ll. 264-277). 69 Gilgameš and Huwawa A 1. For a differing opinion with previous literature on this passage, see G. Steiner, “ uwawa und sein ‘Bergland’ in der sumerischen Tradition”, ASJ 18 (1996) 187-215. 70 For this interpretation, see George, Gilgamesh 97-98, with previous literature. 202 christopher woods “settle him in an overseas country, in the land of Tilmun, where the sun rises.”71 Much has been made of Tilmun in the Sumerian Flood Story, particularly in light of the island’s role in Enki and Ninhursag. But I suggest that Tilmun’s mythological status—with regard to Ziusudra and immortality at least—has less to do with the inherent qualities of the island, or with any notion of a Sumerian paradise, than with the simple fact that Bahrain lies in the remote east. At the likely time of the Flood Story’s composition, the Ur III or OB period, Tilmun was, by virtue of its trade, a location of considerable prominence on the Mesopotamian mental map and thereby served as a magnet, attracting to itself the mythological notions of the east. Much like the vague and mystical notions that surrounded Aratta, another place identified with the far east, Tilmun was a convenient toponym that gave shape to the vague notions of cosmography, the peg of reality on which the abstract was hung.72 It is an interpretation that is again suggested by the version of the Flood presented in Gilgameš—a tale concerned more with cosmic geography and written in an age when Tilmun’s importance had waned—in which there is no mention of Tilmun, and Ūta-napišti, the “Far-Away,” resides at the mythical pî nārāti “Mouth of the Rivers.” No doubt the unexpected fresh water springs of Tilmun contributed to its resemblance to the cosmic pî nārāti, evoking, as George has discussed, the late understanding of classical and Arabic sources that the Tigris and Euphrates resurfaced on the island.73 But, again, the mythologization of Tilmun in this regard—its association with immortality—likely grew out of the broader mythology of the east, Tilmun becoming a real world incarnation of the vague and indefinite. As we shall see, rivers were integral to the cosmic geography of the east, appearing in contexts having nothing to do with the destination of the Tigris and Euprates, nor with pî nārāti.74 71 kur-bal kur-dilmun-na ki-dUtu-è-šè mu-un-tìl-eš (The Flood Story, Segment E 11). 72 Arguing on different grounds, P. Michalowski reaches a similar conclusion: “Dilmun, which in certain contexts undoubtedly has a real referent, has to be considered as a mental construct in literary texts, a name without any necessary connection with the topography of a particular place” (“Mental Maps and Ideology: Reflections on Subartu”, in: H. Weiss, The Origins of Cities in Dry-Farming Syria and Mesopotamia in the Thrid Millennium B.C. [Guilford, CT 1986] 134-135). 73 George, Gilgamesh 520. 74 Further, in the tradition that is preserved, the Tigris and Euphrates were conceived as flowing to the mythical Mt. Hašur, and not Tilmun: A.MEŠ ídHAL. at the edge of the world 203 Creation and the Space-Time Metaphor No feature of the horizon better reflects the mythology of the east than the cosmic Du6-kug, the Sacred Mound, source of all things. Like Mt. Māšu, which extends from the Upperworld to the Underworld, from šupuk šamê ‘the firmament’ to arallû ‘the Netherworld’, Dukug bonds heaven with earth.75 Indeed, Dukug, specified as the place where fates are determined, is synonymous with the mountain of sunrise in some contexts: “Šamaš, when you emerge from the great mountain, when you emerge from the great mountain, the mountain of springs, when you emerge from the Sacred Mound, where destinies are decreed . . .”76 This is a cosmological notion for which there is a cultic counterpart, for the temple, conceived as a microcosm of the cosmos—the universe in miniature—contained a Dukug as a cultic installation, a raised platform on which fates were fixed. Thus, of the Eninnu it is said: sig4 Du6-kug-ta nam-tar-re-da “brickwork, on (its) Sacred Mound destiny is determined,”77 while in Babylon the Dukug was known as parak šīmti “Dais of Destinies”—“the Sacred Mound, where destinies are decreed.”78 As expressed by an epithet of Eunir, Enki’s temple in Eridu, Dukug is further recognized for its ambrosia-like sustenance: Du6-kug ú sikil-la rig7-ga “Sacred Mound where pure food is consumed,”79 a notion that draws from a broader conception of the eastern horizon as a place of abundance and plenty beyond the ordinary. In the Death of Ur-Namma, Inana cries that failure to observe the divine ordinances (giš-hur) will result in “no HAL A.MEŠ ídPu-rat-ti KUG.MEŠ šá iš-tu kup-pi a-na kur a-šur a- u-ni “Pure waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which come forth from (their) springs to Mt. Hašur” (KAR 34: 14-15)—see W. F. Albright, “The Mouth of the Rivers”, AJSL 35 (1919) 176-77; George, Gilgamesh 864. 75 Gilgameš IX 40-41; cf. hur-sag an-ki-bi-da-ke4 ‘upon the hill (lit. mountain range) of heaven and earth’ (Lahar and Ašnan 1). Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 98, notes that Mt. Simirriya in Sargon’s 8th campaign (TCL 3 i 18-19) is described in similar terms. That mountains were envisioned as reaching down to the Netherworld likely contributed to kur as a designation for the latter. 76 R. Borger, JCS 21 (1967) 2-3: 1-3 (bīt rimki ). 77 Temple Hymns 31: 245. 78 [D]u6-k[ug] ki nam-tar-tar-re-Ϟeϟ-[dè] : [MIN dLugal-dìm-me-er-an-ki-a šá ub-šu-ukkin-na . . .] “Du-kug Ki-namtartarede (“Pure Mound, where destinies are decreed”) [the seat of Lugaldimmerankia in Ubšu-ukinna . . .]” (George, Topographical Texts 52-53: TINTIR II: 17'; see the comm. on pp. 286-287, 290291, with further evidence for Dukug as a cultic installation in various cities). 79 Temple Hymns 17: 4. 204 christopher woods abundance at the gods’ place of sunrise,”80 and in Gilgameš and the Bull of Heaven, An informs Inana that the Bull of Heaven, Utu’s alterego, “can only graze at the place where the sun rises.”81 Like the gold and pearls that pave the paths of the Land of Darkness in the Greek Alexander Romance (II.40-41), this is a notion that in Gilgameš takes the form of the mythical garden of gemstones at the eastern end of the Path of the Sun, on the shores of the cosmic sea.82 More than a place of supernatural abundance, however, Dukug, in Lahar and Ašnan, is the primeval location of the Creation: this is the place where An spawned the Anuna gods, where the gods dwell, the place where sheep and grain, the basis of civilization, were first created.83 Dukug as kur idim/šad nagbi “mountain of springs,” and so perhaps to be identified with pî nārāti “Mouth of the Rivers,” is also the place from where the headwaters of the cosmic river rise from the Apsû—this is Íd-mah ‘Great River’, the primeval river, which in other contexts carries the epithet bānât kalama “creatrix of everything.”84 giš-hur kalam-ma hé-me-a-gub-ba sag ba-Ϟra-ba-anϟ-ús-sa ki ud è dingir-ree-ne-šè nam-hé-gál?-Ϟbiϟ nu-gál “if there are divine ordinances imposed on the land, but they are not observed, there will be no abundance at the gods’s place of sunrise” (Death of Ur-Namma 210-211). 81 lú-tur-mu gud an-na ú-gu7-bi in-nu an-úr-ra ú gu7-bi-im ki-sikil dInana gud an-na ki dUtu è-a-šè ú im-da-gu7-e za-e gud an-na nu-mu-e-da-ab-zé-èg-en “My child, the Bull of Heaven would not have any pasture, as its pasture is on the horizon. Maiden Inana, the Bull of Heaven can only graze where the sun rises. So I cannot give the Bull of Heaven to you!” (Gilgameš and the Bull of Heaven, Segment B 47-49). 82 Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 102 already points out the parallel with the Alexander Romance, and further parallels are discussed by George, Gilgamesh 497-498 and nn. 185-186. 83 Lahar and Ašnan 2, 26-27. 84 Íd-mah is here considered to be a manifestation of dÍd (also Woods, ZA 95 [2005] 7-45); that this river flows on the eastern horizon is shown by Ibbi-Sîn B, Segment A 23-24, discussed below (see n. 154). For the epithet bānât kalāma/u “creatrix of everything,” see the Incantation to the River (R. Caplice, Or 36 [1967] 4: 6; STC 1, 200: 1, 201: 1; ed. pp. 128-129). The notion that kur idim/šad nagbi “the mountain of springs,” i.e., Dukug, is to be identified with the mountain of sunrise—and, moreover, that the waters springing forth ultimately derive from the Apsû—is made explicit in the following: a i-di-im sikil-la-ta Eriduki-ta mú-a : A.MEŠ nag-be KUG.MEŠ šá ina E-ri-du ib-ba-nu-ú, kur i-di-im sikil-la-ta kur erenna-ta im-ta-è : ina KUR-e nag-be el-li KUR e-re-ni ú- u-ni “pure water of the spring, which originated in Eridu (i.e., the Apsû), and has flowed forth from the mountain of the pure spring, the mountain of cedars” (STT 197 rev. 57-60; ed. J. S. Cooper, ZA 62 [1972] 74: 28-29; šad erēni, as noted above, is one of the epithets of the mountain of sunrise). Further evidence for spring(s), nagbu, issuing forth from the Apsû appears in the bilingual excerpt: idim-Abzu-ta agrun-ta è-a-meš : ina na-gab 80 at the edge of the world 205 The eastern horizon as the setting of creation is a conception that finds an intriguing counterpart in Enki and Ninhursag, a creation myth set in distant Tilmun. What this myth describes at the outset (11-28)—and what is also described in the incantation recited in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (136f.) and, apparently, reiterated in a fragmentary literary text from Ur (UET 6, 61)—is a period of pristine primitivism at the Beginning, a period without the benefits of civilization, but also without the negative implications apparently associated with it: free of disease, death, predation, or fear, a time, as related in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (146), before the confusion of tongues.85 This is a period of stasis with time at a virtual standstill: “No old woman said: ‘I am an old woman’. No old man said: ‘I am an old man’.”86 From this point of timelessness, time begins to unfold, as gauged by mortal longevity, but at an imperceptibly slow pace, gradually quickening during the mythical past until it reaches its familiar stride. It is a notion that is also found in the Sumerian King List, where the antediluvian rulers reigned for tens of thousands of years, their postdiluvian counterparts thousands and hundreds of years, with the length of reigns gradually diminishing to mortal levels. And it holds true for the Early Rulers of Lagaš, according to which a postdiluvian childhood lasted one hundred years and adulthood another one hundred years, while the Ap-si-i ina ku-um-me ir-bu-u-šú-nu “they grew up in the spring(s) of the Apsû, in the cella” (CT 16, 15 v 34-36; cf. ibid. 30f.; CT 17, 13: 14; 4R 2 v 32-33—see CAD N/1 sub nagbu A lex.), while the bond between Dukug and Apsû is demonstrated by the fact that Dukug may serve as a byname for the latter (Du6-kug : Ap-su-u [Malku I 290]; cf. [du-ú] : DU6 = šá Du6-kug Abzu [Idu II 33]; cf. Temple Hymns 17: 3-4). Collectively, the evidence suggests an identification, or at least a close association, of pî nārāti with Dukug. 85 On this point see already Alster, BBVO 2, 56-58; T. Jacobsen, “The Eridu Genesis”, JBL 100 (1981) 516, with the relevant lines of UET 6, 61 (identified by Jacobsen as a version of the Flood Story) given in 516-517 n. 7. P. Attinger (“Enki et Nn ursa‘ga”, ZA 74 [1984] 33-34) and most recently D. Katz (“Enki and Ninhursa‘ga, Part One: The Story of Dilmun”, BiOr 64 [2007] 578), among others, maintain a very different interpretation of this passage; I will discuss these issues further in a forthcoming study of the grammar and context of Enki and Ninhursag 1-3. 86 um-ma-bi um-ma-me-en nu-mu-ni-bé ab-ba-bi ab-ba-me-en nu-mu-ni-bé (Enki and Ninhursag 22-23). Of course, the notion that antediluvian man enjoyed life without limit is central to Atrahasis; the theme is also found in the description of primordial times in Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave, i.e., [ud ul an ki-ta bad-rá-a-ba] . . . sag gi6 zid sù-ud-Ϟbaϟ mi-ni-ib-dùg-ge-eš-ba ‘When in ancient days heaven was separated from earth . . . when the black headed (people) enjoyed long life’ (1, 15). 206 christopher woods reigns of the earliest rulers lasted thousands of years beyond that, but during that time the essential technologies of civilization—the hoe, the plow, irrigation—did not yet exist. As described in Lahar and Ašnan, this was a period of complete primitive simplicity in which “the people of those days did not know about eating bread. They did not know about wearing clothes; they went about the land with naked limbs. Like sheep they ate grass with their mouths and drank water from ditches.”87 What is described here is a stark-primitive ideal that is associated with a purity, a longevity, and, as will be described in the following pages, a wisdom, that is beyond contemporary mortal bounds. As raw and vulgar as Lahar and Ašnan portrays this inchoate state, the evidence taken as a whole describes a Golden Age of sorts, granted one having nothing to do with a Sumerian paradise, but a Golden Age nonetheless from which man has steadily declined, civilization coming at the cost of purity88—a motif for which crosscultural parallels can be drawn from Hesiod’s vanished ages, to the Taoist age of sage-kings, to the notions of the Noble Savage during the Enlightenment. However, it is the Tilmun setting of Enki and Ninhursag that is of particular interest to this discussion. Clearly, the myth is in part an etiology for Bahrain’s defining characteristics, explaining its unexpected fresh-water springs, its Enki cult, and its prosperous trade. Yet, like Ziusudra’s connection with the island, it is the broader mythology of the east that allows Tilmun as the setting of the inchoate world to be conceptually feasible. Essentially, what is at issue is a coupling of the iconic structures of space and time, a metaphorical relationship in which distance in space is equated with distance in time, creating an opposition here, now vs. there, then. By this same rationale, longevity and rejuvenation are placed in the contexts of both the distant past and the remote east—just as the immortal Ziusudra and his Babylonian counterpart Ūta-napišti dwell on the eastern margin of the map, and as Lugalbanda finds rejuvenation in the eastern mountains, so mankind in ages past lived lives of Methuselian lengths. And this same relation holds 87 ninda gu7-ù-bi nu-mu-un-zu-uš-àm túg-ga mu4-mu4-bi nu-mu-un-zu-uš-àm kalam giš-ge-na su-bi mu-un-gen udu-gim ka-ba ú mu-ni-ib-gu7 a mú-sar-ra-ka i-im-na8-na8-ne (Lahar and Ašnan 21-25). 88 Cf. Alster, BBVO 2, 55-58, who in his efforts to debunk the myth of a Sumerian paradise—and he is no doubt correct on that point—goes further; seeing only the negative aspects of this primeval state, Alster describes it as “pure barbarism” (ibid., 57). at the edge of the world 207 with respect to simplicity and primitivism and the far east, for the eastward travels of Gilgameš and Lugalbanda through the wilderness amount to a return to primordial times, when man was like the beasts and civilization did not yet exist.89 It is the identity of distance in space and distance in time that accounts for the Mesopotamian belief that fates were determined both at the Beginning and, in mimicry of the event, each day at ki d Utu è-a “the place where the sun rises.” As the cosmos began in the primordial past, each day begins in the remote east, ‘distance’ being the coordinate common to both. And such is the rationale for the primeval past and the eastern horizon sharing a set of literary images. In Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the idyllic Golden Age, devoid of fear and predation, is first described as ud-ba muš nu-gál-àm gíri nu-gál-àm “a time without snakes and without scorpions” (136) and this description is apparently repeated verbatim in UET 6, 61, which may be related to the Flood Story.90 Remarkably, this same imagery describes Mt. Hašur, the mountain of sunrise, in Lugalbanda: da-da-ba ha-šu-úr nu-zu kur-ra-ka muš nu-un-sul-sul gíri nu-sa-sa . . . “Nearby, upon Mt. Hašur, the unknowable mountain, where no snake slithers, no scorpion scurries . . .” (36-37). The loss of immortality, the great longevity of antediluvian man, and his decline with successive generations, naturally evokes Genesis,91 but it is Hesiod who provides the more compelling parallel, capturing not only the temporal, but also the spatial dimensions of the Golden Age, for the survivors of the fourth generation of man live apart from other men, dwelling “at the ends of earth. And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep-swirling Ocean.”92 Like most cultures, the Greeks had an ethnocentric view of the world, one in which Greece was Lugalbanda is reduced to foraging like a wild animal (zag-še-gá ki um-mani-ús a kušummud-gim ù-mu-nag ur-bar-ra-gim gúm-ga-àm mi-ni-za ú-sal ì-kú-en tu-gur4mušen-gim ki im-de5-de5-ge-en i-li-a-nu-um kur-ra ì-kú-[en] ‘Lying on my side, I drank water as from a water-skin; I howled like a wolf, I grazed the meadows; I pecked the ground like a pigeon; I ate the mountain acorns’ [Lugalbanda 241243]), and must re-learn and re-create essential elements of civilization, such as making fire from flint and baking bread (Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave 287-293). Gilgamesh, in his wanderings east towards the realm of Ūta-napišti, slaughters lions for food, clads himself in their skins, and digs wells that did not exist previously (Gilg. OB VA+BM i 1'-3'). 90 Jacobsen, JBL 100, 517 n. 7: 11'; also Alster, BBVO 2, 56-58. 91 Also discussed in this context by Jacobsen, JBL 100, 519-521. 92 Works and Days 167f.; also cited by Alster, BBVO 2, 59-60. 89 208 christopher woods not only the here, but also the now. Similar to the Mesopotamian correlation of space and time, distance from the Greek origin was inversely proportional to time and, notably, to social development. As Romm explains, “just as the Greeks tended to correlate historic time with geographic space . . . thereby locating the earliest stratum of cosmic evolution beyond the edges of the earth, so they also envisioned rings of progressively more primitive social development surrounding a Mediterranean hearth; in the furthest ring, at the banks of Ocean, social primitivism becomes absolute.”93 Thus, those tribes residing on the edge of the world—the Hyperboreans, experiencing “neither sickness, nor baneful old age,” the “blameless” Ethiopians, and the primitive but spiritually pure, half-man half-human Kunokephaloi, the ‘Dog-heads’94—enjoy not only super-human longevity, but also lives of a pristine simplicity that harkens back to the Golden Age. Indeed, there is some indication that this dimension of social evolution belongs to the Mesopotamian conception as well. In Gilgameš and Huwawa, Gilgameš succeeds in duping Huwawa—who is portrayed as something of a provincial bumpkin—of his innate, mystical auras, ní-te, by trading for them with concubines,95 flour, a waterskin, shoes, and semiprecious stones. These are the trappings and products of civilization that were apparently unknown in Huwawa’s primitive domain in the remote east. The Future and the Bourne of the Unknown The primary term for the eastern horizon in Sumero-Akkadian sources, as discussed, is ki dUtu è(-a) = ašar īt dŠamši, literally, “the place of the coming out of the Sun-god.” In its most basic and literal sense, the expression refers to the sun’s daily emergence from the Netherworld, which in the Mesopotamian cosmology is identical to the nocturnal sky: ud gi6-ta è-a “as the day comes out of the darkness.”96 Of night and day, night is the older, preceding Romm, Edges of the Earth 47. Romm, Edges of the Earth 50, 60, 78. 95 Gilgameš’s sisters in the myth, Enmebaragesi and Peštur, naturally recall the role of Šam at in the Akkadian epic, who, similarly, representing the civilization, strips Enkidu of his untouched innocence and purity. 96 Barton Cylinder vi 7, 10; ed. B. Alster and A. Westenholz, ASJ 16 [1994] 15-46; similarly, in a description of primordial times, there is the statement: ud-ba ud 93 94 at the edge of the world 209 and engendering day. This is something of a universal idea as the Greek, Vedic, and Norse cosmologies, among others, bear witness. The identity of the night sky with the Netherworld stems from an understanding that the celestial sphere steadily rotated from east to west, bringing the stars and other heavenly bodies from the Netherworld into the Upperworld.97 It accounts for why, in the tripartite division of the cosmos described in a cosmological text, it is the nether heavens that belong to the stars;98 why stars were thought to originate in the Apsû;99 why, on the theological plane, Utu was born in the agrun, another designation for the Apsû;100 and, finally, why in Gilgameš’s ominous dream, Enkidu’s forthcoming appearance is foreshadowed by a meteorite, a fragment of the nether heavens, a splinter of the future. As Steinkeller has recently discussed, the coming day—the future—is conceived and gestates in the Netherworld at night.101 It is a conception that is coded in en-na-àm gi6 barag-ga-àm dUtu lugal-àm ‘at that time, the day was lord, the night was prince (lit. sovereign), and Utu was king’ (Enmerkar and Ensuhgirana 14). 97 On this point see Huxley, Iraq 62, 112, 125; eadem, JRAS ns 7, 189-198. There was apparently a competing tradition that understood the stars to be fixed and only the sun to move—[melamm]ūka Girra nap u katmū kakkabānū šamê gimir ūmi “(Šamaš,) your aura is a blazing fire, the stars of the sky are covered all the day” (Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 174 n. 34; also Huxley, Iraq 62, 124). The conception that the Netherworld is identical to the night sky is also found in Vedic mythology— see F. B. J. Kuiper, “The Ancient Aryan Verbal Contest”, Indo-Iranian Journal 4 (1960) 225-226; cited and discussed by B. Alster, “On the Earliest Sumerian Literary Traditon”, JCS 28 (1976) 118 n. 28. 98 Ϟšamûϟ šaplûtu ašpû ša kakkabānī “the Lower Heavens are jasper; they belong to the stars” (AfO 19 [1959-1960] pl. 33 rev. iv 22; ed. Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 3-6). 99 See Caplice, Or 42 (1973) 299-305; also Alster, JCS 28, 118 n. 28; and n. 67 above. Note the prophetic role played by stars in Gudea’s dreams, e.g., ki-sikil . . . gi-dub-ba kug-NE šu bí-du8-a dub mul dùg-ga bí-gál-la-a ad im-dagi4-a nin9-mu dNisaba ga-nam-me-àm é-a dù-ba mul kug-ba gù ma-ra-a-dé ‘the young woman . . ., who held a stylus of NE-metal and placed it against a tablet of propitious stars, which she was consulting—that was in fact my sister, Nisaba. She announced to you in the bright stars the building of the temple’ (Gudea Cyl. A v 21-vi 2); ma-dù-na ma-dù-na énsi é-mu ma-dù-na Gù-dé-a é-mu dùda giškim-bi ga-ra-ab-sum garza-gá mul an kug-ba gù ga-mu-ra-a-dé ‘for what you are to build for me, for what you are to build for me, ruler, for the temple you are to build for me, Gudea, for my house you are to build, I will now give you an ominous sign—I will announce to you my cultic task in the bright heavenly stars’ (Gudea Cyl. A ix 7-10). 100 d Utu uru-da agrun an-na dumu dNin-gal-e tud-da “Utu, born with the city to Ningal in the heavenly agrun” (Hymn to Utu B 9). 101 Steinkeller, Biblica et Orientalia 48, 34-37. Steinkeller, following Oppenheim (Dream-book 235-236), points out that dreams, as representative of the future, were considered to originate in the Netherworld (as in the Greco-Roman conception) and were therefore under the charge of the Sun-god, who also takes the name 210 christopher woods the Akkadian expression warkiāt ūmī, literally, “the days that are behind,” which, in fact, is a reference to the future. The past is before us, we have experienced it, we know it, we can, in a sense, see it; on the other hand, the future is unknown and unseeable, and so, in spatial terms, is behind us. In contrast to the understanding of time commonly embedded in Western languages, in which the future is conceived as before us and the past, behind, the model of time encoded in the opposition pānû ‘front’, ‘earlier, previous’ vs. warkû ‘rear’, ‘later, future’—as counterintuitive as it is—is of time moving with respect to the observer in a way that corresponds to the circuit of the sun, with a future that is below the horizon and therefore unknown. This understanding of time is attested elsewhere, for instance, Malagasy and the Indian languages Aymara and Toba, but it is nonetheless typologically rare.102 This spatial model of time lends itself to the notion that the horizon is the bourne of the unknown, that the boundary of the known world, where the future is made manifest, is, quite literally, beyond the compass of mortal comprehension.103 In Lugalbanda, the hero lies dying and awaits Anzu on Ha-šu-úr nu-zu kur-ra-ka “(Mt.) Hašur, the unknowable mountain,” a descriptive epithet that Anzaqar, the god of dreams. Also note, in this connection, the symbolism associated with the auspicious appearance of the chthonic/Netherworld deity Ningišzida in Gudea’s dream: ud ki-šár-ra ma-ra-ta-è-a dingir-zu dNin-giš-zid-da ud-gim ki-šara ma-ra-da-ra-ta-è ‘the daylight that came out for you from the horizon—that was Ningišzida. He was able to come out for you from the horizon like daylight’ (Gudea Cyl. A v 19-20). 102 See L. Boroditsky, “Metaphoric structuring: understanding time through spatial metaphors”, Cognition 75 (2000) 1-28; Ø. Dahl, “When the future comes from behind: Malagasy and other time concepts and some consequences for communication”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 19 (1995) 197-209; H. E. M. Klein, “The future precedes the past: time in Toba”, Word 38 (1987) 173-185; A. W. Miracle, Jr. and J. de Dios Yapita Moya, “Time and Space in Aymara”, in: M. J. Hardman, The Aymara Language and Its Social and Cultural Context (University of Florida monographs. Social Sciences 67; Gainesville, FL 1981) 33-56; G. Radden, “The Metaphor TIME AS SPACE across Languages”, Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht (http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de) 8 (2003) 226-239. 103 On this point, see also the discussion of Polonsky, “The Rise of the Sun God” 313-318, 329-332, who cites much of this evidence, but, who, evidently, sees no connection with the Netherworld. In fact, it is the role of the Netherworld in all things concerned with the horizon—from divine wisdom, to the future, to fate determination and divine judgment, to birth—that is the critical point on which Polonsky and I diverge. In my opinion, the Netherworld is the place of origin and the horizon the place of manifestation; for Polonsky, the horizon is simultaneously the place of creation and realization (e.g., note Polonsky’s comments in ibid., pp. 249, 278-79, 331-32, 608f.). at the edge of the world 211 appears three times in the epic.104 Elsewhere, Lugalbanda pleads with Inana to spare him lest he perish in á-úr kur ha-šu-úr-ra-ke4 “the secret place of Mt. Hašur,”105 while Gilgameš repeatedly expresses a desire to learn the secrets of Huwawa’s unfathomable dwelling in the remote eren-mountains of the east: kur-ra tuš-a-zu ba-ra-zu kur-ra tuš-a-zu hé-zu-àm “your residence in the mountains cannot be known—yet one yearns to learn of your residence in the mountains!”106 Further, Nungal’s cosmic prison—replica of the Netherworld—is described as Urugal kur dUtu è-a šag4-bi lú nu-zu “Netherworld, mountain where Utu rises, no one can learn its interior/essence,”107 where there is little doubt that šag4-bi is intended as a double entendre. This inaccessible place, shrouded in mythic darkness, is not to be approached by the lone, intrepid traveler, for Lugalbanda, returning to his troops from Hašur mountain, “like one stepping from heaven to earth,”108 is put the question: “How did you traverse the great mountains, to which no one should travel alone, from which no man returns to his fellow man?”109 These same words take the form of an admonishment when the hero proposes to set out alone for Uruk, once again endeavoring to cross the mountains that define the boundary of the known world. And it is a warning that is echoed in Šuruppag’s advice to Ziusudra, “My son, you should not travel eastwards alone.”110 104 Lugalbanda 36, 62, 129 (lit. ‘in Hašur, the unknown (peak) of the mountains’); the translation “in the mountains where no cypresses (i.e., hašur trees) grow” (ETCSL; cf. “(Teil) des Gebriges, der keine ašur-Zypressen kennt” Wilcke Lugalbandaepos [see 145-146 ad 36]), is difficult given that the eastern mountains are virtually defined by their hašur trees; it is also contradicted by the Akkadian rendering of this passage: ana MIN( a-šur) šad lā lamādi “on (Mt.) Hašur, the unknowable mountain (lit. mountain of not knowing)” (l. 62). Moreover, the understanding of Mt. Hašur as “the unknowable mountain,” meshes well with the description elsewhere of the mythological mountains of the east as inaccessible or impenetrable, e.g., hur-sag Arattaki šu nu-te-ge26 ‘Aratta, the inaccessible mountain range’ (Inanna and Ebih 48, 107); [a-bi a-na šá-a]d la a-ri li- iš man-nu ‘father, who could rush off to the inaccessible mountain (Mt. Šaršar)?’ (SB Anzu I 89). 105 Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave 196; the interpretation of this line follows the PSD A/2 sub a2-ur2 mng. 2.3—cf. Polonsky, “The Rise of the Sun God” 314. 106 Gilgameš and Huwawa A 138, 142, 148 (C, N, Y, II, SS). 107 Nungal Hymn 9. 108 lú an-ta ki-a gub-ba-gim (Lugalbanda 222). 109 hur-sag gal lú dili nu-du-ù-da lú-bi lú-ra nu-gi4-gi4-da a-gim im-da-du-dè-en (Lugalbanda 231-232; cf. 335-336). 110 dumu-mu ki dUtu è-a-aš dili-zu-ne kaskal na-an-ni-du-un (Instructions of Šuruppag 165-166). 212 christopher woods But the notion assumes its most profound form in Gilgameš, where, playing upon the space-time metaphor, the unknown east is correlated with secret, antediluvian knowledge. Gilgameš’s journey to Ūta-napišti is not only a quest for immortality, but, tightly bound up with it, a quest to recover the heavenly wisdom that was lost with the Flood, a wisdom that can now only be found on the eastern edge of the world and in the kindred Apsû. In this respect, Gilgameš has succeeded in his quest, for he is lyricized in the prologue for having “brought back a message from before the Flood,”111 and for having reestablished the ancient cultic rites that the Flood swept away.112 Ūta-napišti, protégé of Ea, discloses to Gilgameš a “secret matter,” a “mystery of the gods”113—ancient truths that are beyond the ken of contemporary mankind.114 These were the sage teachings of the antediluvian age that were passed to the Flood hero from his father, Šuruppag, in time immemorial.115 Indeed, the very incipit of the epic, ša naqba īmuru “He who saw the Deep,”116 refers to the secret knowledge of Ea and the Apsû that has been revealed to Gilgameš, secret knowledge that makes itself manifest—bubbling to the surface like the waters of ina pî nārāti, rising like the unknown future—on the eastern horizon. This last image, of course, recalls the well, būru, that Gilgameš digs in order to conjure a propitious dream—just as Odysseus does to summon prophetic ghosts—literally, tapping into the Netherworld to extract the future gestating therein.117 Like the epithet of Dukug, kur idim/šad nagbi, the play upon nagbu extends to its meanings ‘source’, ‘everything’. Thus, Ūta-napišti’s residence on edge of the world is tied not only to his exemption from mortal doom, but also to the fact that he is the sole possessor of the knowledge from before the Flood, a [u]bla ēma ša lām abūb[i ] (Gilg. I 8). mutēr mā āzi ana ašrīšunu ša u alliqu abūbu Ϟmukīnϟ par ī ana nišī apâti “who restored the cult-centers that the Flood destroyed and established the proper rites for the human race” (Gilg. I 43-44). 113 amāt ni irti u pirišti ša ilī (Gilg. XI 9-10, 281-282). 114 See George, Gilgamesh 508-509. In this connection, also observe Ninsun’s prediction that Gilgamesh will become wise with Ea of the Apsû (Gilg. III 104). 115 Instructions of Šuruppag 1-6. 116 Again, following the translation of George, Gilgamesh, 539: 1, which captures nicely the subtleties of the term; see his discussion on pp. 444-445. Also note in this connection the above quoted description of Dukug as the kur idim/šad nagbi “mountain of springs/sources” (Borger, JCS 21, 3: 2). 117 Gilgameš IV 5; Odyssey XI: 23f.; see Oppenheim Dream-book 236. Also to be included here is the “channel” (rā u) that Gilgameš must dig in order to obtain the plant of rejuvenation (XI 288). 111 112 at the edge of the world 213 prerogative that is embodied in the moniker Atra- asīs ‘Extra-Wise’. That this knowledge belongs to the very fabric of the eastern horizon, and exists not merely on account of the Flood hero’s presence, is demonstrated by the character of Šiduri, the ale-wife dwelling by the cosmic sea dispensing sage council, who in Šurpu is counted as a goddess of wisdom.118 The Cutting of Fates and Judgments on the Horizon As I touched upon in previous pages, the eastern horizon is the place where judgments are decided and where destinies are fixed, attributes that now find an explanation in the wake of the foregoing discussion of the horizon as the point of manifestation of a future that gestates in the Netherworld. The cutting of judgments at the place of sunrise is made plain in the Sippar Temple Hymn—di kud-ru ki ud è “(Šamaš) pronounces judgment at the place where the sun rises”119—and elsewhere Utu is referred to as the judge “who searches out the verdicts of the gods” at the place where the sun rises.120 It is an idea that takes on metaphorical dimensions as well, for in Lagaš “days of justice had risen for (Gudea), and he set (his) foot on the neck of evil and complaint; for his city he had risen from the horizon like Utu.”121 As for the fixing of fates at daybreak, there appears also in Gudea Cyl. B (v 16) the succinct statement, Utu è-àm nam tar-ra-àm “the sun is rising, destiny is 118 d Šiduri lip ur dIštar nēmeqi “may Šiduri release, goddess of wisdom” (Šurpu II 173); see George, Gilgamesh 149 and n. 52. Šiduri’s resemblance to Ūta-napišti in this regard is underscored by the fact that her counsel in the Old Babylonian epic was reshaped and attributed to the latter in the SB version (see George, Gilgamesh 32). 119 Temple Hymns 46: 489. 120 ur-sag gud ha-šu-úr-ta è-a gù huš dé-dé-e šul dUtu gud silim-ma gub-ba ù-na silig gar-ra ad-da uru gal ki ud è-a nimgir [gal] an kug-ga di-kud ka-aš bar Ϟkígϟ dingir-re-e-ne su6 na4za-gìn lá An kug-ga an-úr-ta è-a dUtu dumu dNin-gal-e tud-da d En-ki-ke4 an ki nígin-na-ba zag-ba nam-mi-in-gub “(Enki placed in charge of the whole of heaven and earth) the hero, the bull who emerges from the hašur forest bellowing truculently, the youth Utu, the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically, the father of the ‘Great City’, at the place where the sun rises (he is) the great herald of holy An, the judge who searches out verdicts for the gods, with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon into the holy heavens—Utu, the son born by Ningal” (Enki and the World Order 374-380). 121 ud níg-si-[sá] mu-na-Ϟta-èϟ níg-érim ì-dUtu gú-bi gìri bí-ús uru-e dUtu-gim ki-ša-ra im-ma-ta-a-è (Gudea Cyl. B xviii 10-13). 214 christopher woods determined.” Naturally, this too was conceived as taking place on the eastern horizon—ki dUtu è ki nam-tar-re-da “the place where the Sun-god rises, the place where fates are determined.”122 In Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave, it is Utu who wields the power to fix destinies, “as the bright bull rose from the horizon, bull of Mt. Hašur, who determines fates . . .”123 But as discussed by Polonksy, most often the ultimate authority to determine fates rests with the chief deities of the pantheon, An and Enlil, while the Sun-god, “the great herald of holy An,”124 regulates the process by virtue of his daily circuit: “(Without Šamaš) An and Enlil would convoke no assembly in heaven. They would not take counsel concerning the land.”125 Thus Enlil, along with his spouse Ninlil, determines fates on the throne of Ekur, the worldly counterpart of the cosmic horizon—“You decide the fates together at the place where Utu rises.”126 Otherwise, this function is relegated to other major deities who perform this task under the auspices of An and Enlil: “With An, the king, on An’s dais, I (Enki) oversee justice. With Enlil, looking out over the lands, I decree good destinies. He has placed in my hands the decreeing of fates in the place where the Sun(-god) rises.”127 And so Anzu’s power to determine fates in his abode in the distant eastern mountains is also granted by Enlil: “I am the prince who decides the destiny of rolling rivers. I keep on the straight and narrow path the righteous who follow Enlil’s counsel. My father Enlil brought me here. He let me bar the entrance to the mountains as if with a great door. If I fix a fate, who shall alter it? If I but say the word, who shall change it? Whoever has done this to my nest, if you are a god, I will speak 122 Steible NBW 2, 343: 7-8 and 344: 7-8. For further evidence of the horizon as the place where judgments and fates are cut, see Temple Hymns 89-90 ad 192; T. Frymer-Kensky, “The Judicial Ordeal in the Ancient Near East” (Yale diss. 1977) 611: 27; Polonsky, “The Rise of the Sun God” passim. 123 gud babbar an-úr-ta è-a gud ha-šu-úr-ra nam-e-a ak-e (Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave 228-229); the interpretation of nam—ak follows PSD A/3 s.v. ak mng. 8.138 (= šīmta nabû)—cf. Polonsky, “The Rise of the Sun God” 76 n. 204; additional evidence for Utu-Šamaš determing fates is provided in ibid., 239-241. 124 Enki and the World Order 376 (see n. 120). 125 Anu u Enlil ina šamê pu ra ul upa arū milik mātim ul imallikū (E. Ebeling, Or 23 [1953] 213: 3-4). 126 nam tar-re ki dUtu è-a nam ši-mu-da-ab-tar-re (Enlil in the Ekur 164). 127 An lugal-da barag An-na-ka di si sá-e-me-en dEn-líl-da kur-ra igi gál-la-ka nam dug3 tar-ra-me-en nam tar-ra ki ud è-a-ke4 šu-gá mu-un-gál (Enki and the World Order 74-76). at the edge of the world 215 with you, indeed I will befriend you. If you are a man, I will fix your fate . . .”128 Both properties of the horizon, the cutting of judgments and fates, are intimately bound up with the Netherworld and the role of the Sun-god at night. Steinkeller has argued convincingly that Šamaš’s role as the principal deity of divination and extispicy—that is, his ability to predict the future—is based ultimately on the fact that the future is conceived and gestates in the Netherworld, a realm over which the Sun-god holds sway. On the divine plane, Steinkeller contends, extispicy was envisioned as a trial that took place at night in the Netherworld; Šamaš, as the highest authority in the Netherworld, presided over this divine tribunal whose verdict was inscribed in the exta of the sacrificial lamb only to be revealed, significantly, at daybreak, when the real-world extispicy was itself performed.129 Casting this net wider, we come upon the cognate rationale for the eastern horizon as the place where judgments are decided and destinies are fixed. Understood as a type of trial, the purpose of extispicy was to obtain a judgment, to ascertain a truth that was unknown and bound to the future and, therefore, considered to lie on the far side of the horizon, in the Netherworld, only to be made manifest at daybreak. Similarly, the determination of fate or destiny, nam-tar, is often paired—and in many cases interchangeable—with judging, di-kud, or decision making, ka-aš—bar.130 The fixing of fate is, in fact, a judgment, a decision or determination with respect to the future. The semantic overlap between the two is captured by the lexicon itself, as both di-kud and nam-tar denote cutting, a separation: literally one cuts a decision and one cuts a fate—kud and tar being synonymous verbs assigned to the same graph. The very act of determining a destiny or rendering a judgment represents the crossing of the boundary between the darkness of what is in flux and 128 íd hal-hal-la nun nam tar-re-bi-me-en zid-du šag4 kúš-ù dEn-líl-lá-ka gišigitab-bi-me-en a-a-mu dEn-líl-le mu-un-de6-en kur-ra gišig gal-gim igi-ba bí-in-tab-en nam ù-mu-tar a-ba-a šu mi-ni-ib-bal-e inim ù-bí-dug4 a-ba-a íb-ta-bal-e lú gùd-gá ne-en ba-e-a-ak-a dingir hé-me-en inim ga-mu-ra-ab-dug4 gu5-li-gá nam-ba-e-niku4-re-en lú-ùlu hé-me-en nam ga-mu-ri-ib-tar . . . (Lugalbanda 99-108). 129 Steinkeller, Biblica et Orientalia 48, 38-42. Note that the cosmological identity of the night sky with the Netherworld, i.e., the night sky is the nether sky rotated from below, explains why the advocates of the person for whom the extispicy is performed are the stars, i.e., the gods of the night, while the extispicy trial itself takes place in the Netherworld. 130 See Polonsky’s discussion in “Rise of the Sun God” 79-82. 216 christopher woods undecided and the daylight of what is fixed and established. And so there is a natural association with the horizon, which is itself a separation, a determination. But more than the English lexeme, its Greek progenitor, ὁρίζω (horizo) ‘to mark boundaries, separate, delimit’, captures the intimacy of this semantic relationship, for it carries the figurative meanings ‘to appoint’, ‘to decree’, and more to the point, ‘to ordain’, ‘to determine’.131 It is a conception that extends to cosmogony, ‘separation’ being intimately bound up with the creation: Chaos, literally, ‘the opening up’, is the first entity created in the Hesiodic cosmogony and the one that allows all others to emerge. This Greek notion has, of course, a Mesopotamian parallel, if not ancestor132—An-šár and Ki-šár, ‘the entirety of heaven’ and ‘the entirety of earth’, that is, the celestial and terrestrial horizons respectively, are primary entities in Enūma Eliš, while the cosmos that Marduk fashions is created by i pīšī-ma kīma nūn maš ê ana šinīšu “splitting her (Tiāmat) in two like a fish (split for) drying” (IV 137). Moreover, in the earlier tradition preserved in the Hymn to the Hoe, Enlil creates the universe by separating heaven from earth and earth from heaven.133 Fates and omens are but two facets of the same phenomenon of prognostication. Both were conceived as originating in the Netherworld—products of the night that were revealed with the coming day. And the fixing of fate, like its more mundane counterpart, the extispicy verdict, is achieved by a divine assembly that arrives at a ‘decision’; in both cases the celestial deities, the Anunaki, with their close links to the Netherworld, play a critical role. In the legal phraseology in which extispicy and fate determination is so often cast, the night or Netherworldly aspect represents the deliberations upon which the decision is based, the darkness of uncertainty that precedes the divine verdict at daybreak. Tacit corroboration for fates originating in the Netherworld is found in the fact that the god Namtar—lú nam tar-tar-ra-ra “who 131 1251. H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford 1940) 1250- 132 See M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford 1997) 276-283. 133 an ki-ta bad-re6-dè sag na-an-ga-ma-an-sum ki an-ta bad-re6-dè sag naan-ga-ma-an-sum . . . “not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth, and hasten to separate earth from heaven . . .” (The Hymn to the Hoe 4-5; note also Gilgameš, Enkidu, and the Netherworld 8-9). at the edge of the world 217 decrees all fates”134—is a chthonic deity, the vizier of Ereškigal. It is often assumed that Namtar’s association with the Netherworld stems from death being the ultimate fate,135 but it is clear, in light of the foregoing arguments, that this association has a more profound cosmological basis and so the god’s demonic aspect was likely derivative. Just as Night engenders the Destinies in Hesiod’s Theogony (215f.), nam-tar is conceived and gestates in the Netherworld in the Mesopotamian view. This claim goes some way to explaining why destinies may be fixed in the Apsû rather than on the horizon proper;136 why, when Anzu loses the tablet of destinies, it returns to the Apsû;137 and why Lu’utu, ensi of Umma, builds a temple for Ereškigal, the queen of the Netherworld, nin ki ud šu4 “lady of the place where the sun sets,” which faces east, ki dUtu è ki namtar-re-da “the place where the Sun-god rises, the place where fates are determined.”138 Furthermore, it explains why Nungal, having been allotted her divine powers by Ereškigal and having set up her dais in the Netherworld, the mountain where Utu rises, “knows favorable words when determining fates;”139 and, finally, why of the lord of the Netherworld, Nergal, it is said “so that fates will be determined, you, Nergal, determine fates (with An) . . . you rise up over the mountain where the sun rises.”140 The Saw of Šamaš As a corollary to the foregoing arguments, an explanation for Šamaš’s šaššaru-saw, the most distinctive and regular attribute of the The Death of Ur-Namma 108. E.g., J. Klein, “Namtar,” RlA 9 (1998) 143: §1. 136 E.g., Abzu ki sikil ki nam tar-ra “Abzu, pure place, place where the fates are determined” (Enki’s Journey to Nippur 44). 137 dub nam-tar-ra-Ϟbiϟ Abzu-šè ba-an-gi4 (Ninurta and the Turtle, Segment B 4). 138 Steible NBW 2, 343: 2, 7-8; 344: 2, 7-8—šu4 is syllabic for šú. The juxtaposition of the places of sun-rise and sun-set in this inscription represents another instance of the paradoxical phenomenon of coincidentia oppositorum, which, as discussed above (nn. 54-57), is associated with the Netherworld and the horizon, as representatives of both life and death. D. Katz offers a different interpretation of this text in The Image of the Nether World in the Sumerian Sources (Bethesda, MD 2003) 352-353. 139 Nungal Hymn 72, cited below n. 179. 140 nam tar-re nam mu-un-di-ni-ib-tar-re dNergal-ka-me-en . . . kur ud è zìg-game-en (Hymn to Nergal 39, 46). 134 135 218 christopher woods Sun-god, presents itself—returning briefly to the iconography of the horizon. Lambert has recently suggested that this is a weapon, used by the Sun-god to behead criminals.141 Yet others have explained it as the means by which Šamaš cuts his way through the mountains in his daily ascent.142 But this saw with its modest, curved serrated blade, elsewhere attested as a common agricultural implement, is hardly suitable as a weapon, let alone as a tool for cutting through mountains, which, at any rate, were scaled via a staircase. Clearly, in light of the preceding discussion—and it must be remembered that in the glyptic Šamaš brandishes his saw as he rises over the eastern mountains at day break—the šaššaru-saw is symbolic of the cutting of judgments, di-kud, that Šamaš executes, and the cutting of fates, nam-tar, that Šamaš facilitates, on the eastern horizon. And here we must not overlook that the Akkadian verb parāsum, like its Sumerian counterpart kud, denotes both the physical act of separating or dividing as well as the cutting of judgments—a fact that takes on special significance when we take into account the probable Semitic influence if not origins of this seal motif. Further, the association of the cutting of judgments and destinies with the east that gives meaning to the šaššaru-saw of Šamaš may likewise explain the name of the mythical birthplace of Anzu, kurŠáršár—‘Mt. Saw’, a veritable Sierra—perhaps, another designation for the mountain of sunrise.143 In the tradition preserved in the Lipšur-litanies and HAR.ra = ubullu this mountain is equated with Mt. Bašar, i.e., Jebel Bišri, and therefore considered to lie to the northwest.144 But this may be a case of a late toponymic transfer, from east to west, akin to the eren-forest of the Gilgameš tradition. 141 W. G. Lambert, “Sumerian Gods: Combining the Evidence in Texts and Art”, in: I. L. Finkel and M. J. Geller, Sumerian gods and their representations (CM 7; Groningen 1997) 5. 142 E.g., D. Collon, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (Chicago 1987) 35; J. van Dijk, “Sumerische Religion”, in: J. P. Asmussen—J. Læssøe, Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte 1 (Göttingen 1971) 475-476. 143 SB Anzu I 25-28 (Šár-šár KUR-i ). The reading Šár-šár is demonstrated by a gloss (see n. 144); note also the discussion of W. G. Lambert, “Notes on a Work of the Most Ancient Semitic Literature”, JCS 41 (1989) 17-18. Further, in Anzu there is a likely play on Mt. Saw and Anzu’s beak: šá-áš-šá-ru [a]p-p[a-šú . . .] (SB Anzu I 28; ed. W. W. Hallo and W. L. Moran, JCS 31 [1979] 78-79). I thank P. Steinkeller for reminding me that the toponym Sierra (Sp.), captures the natural likening of a mountain range to a saw. 144 KUR Šár-šár = KUR A-mur-ri-i, KUR Ba-šár = KUR A-mur-ri-i (Reiner Lipšur Litanies 134: 38-39); KUR HIšá-ar-šá-arHI = MIN (šá-ad ) A-mur-ri-i, KUR Bi-sar = MIN (šá-ad ) MIN (A-mur-ri-i ) (von Weiher Uruk 114 i 37-38 [Hh.]). at the edge of the world 219 In Erra, despite contemporaneous historical references that may point to the NW, the presence of hašur-trees on Mt. Šaršar suggests the influence of a competing, older tradition, in which Mt. Šaršar is identified with the mountain of sunrise.145 Of course, in Lugalbanda, it is in the eastern mountains where Anzu resides and determines fates. And a location on the eastern horizon is also suggested by the likely mention of Mt. Saw, again in connection with Anzu, in the early Semitic literary text ARET 5, 6//IAS 326+342, a major theme of which is the Sun-god’s rise from the Netherworld.146 The Cosmography of Birth A particularly striking metaphor involving the horizon is the couching of the birth event in terms of sunrise,147 an analogy that ties together many of the themes described in this paper and so serves as a fitting conclusion. Šamaš, along with Sîn and Asallu i-Marduk, was understood to assist in childbirth, and it was not uncommon for the Sun-god to be invoked, or otherwise mentioned, in birth incantations.148 In one such incantation, in the Cow of Sîn tradition, a woman, in the guise of a cow, gives birth “within the pen of the Sun-god, in the fold of Šakan,”149 son of Šamaš, and, in 145 ša-da-a Šár-šár im-ta-nu qaq-qar-šu ša qiš-ti giš a-šur uk-tap-pi-ra gu-up-ni-ša “Mt. Šaršar he razed to the ground; in the hašur-forest, he rooted out trunks” (Cagni Erra IV 143-144). 146 . . . DUGUD AN.ZU HUR.SAG sa-sa-ru12 i-ra-ad “. . . venerable(?) Anzu, Mt. Šaršar is quaking” (after Krebernik, Quaderni di Semitistica 18, 75: C6.2-6.3// A4.6-4.7; for the identification of sa-sa-ru12 with Mt. Šaršar, see Lambert, JCS 41, 17-18). The Netherworld/easterly setting of much of the myth is suggested by the repeated references to Ea, the Apsû, and the Anuna gods, as well as the congregation of the River-god (see below), Šamaš, and Ištaran, the god of justice who resides in Dēr on the eastern frontier of Mesopotamia, the worldy counterpart of the cosmic horizon where judgments are rendered. With regard to this last point, it may be Gilgameš’s legendary travels east, in addition to his role as judge of the Netherworld, that accounts for his relationship with Dēr as evidenced by a garden in his name within the city (von Weiher Uruk 185 rev. 7'; cf. George, Gilgamesh 112, 125). 147 On this methaphor, cf. Polonsky, “Rise of the Sun God” 608-622. 148 M. Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (CM 14; Groningen 2000) 133-134. This association with childbirth may explain the cooccurrence of the Sun-god and an infant or child in several seals, e.g., Boehmer, Die Entwicklung der Glyptik Abb. 483, 560. 149 i-na ta-ar-ba- í-im ša dUTU sú-pu-ú-úr dSumuqan! ( J. van Dijk, Or 41 [1972] 343-344: 2-3; see B. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 2 vols. [Bethesda, MD 1993] 135). 220 christopher woods another context, the infant, emerging from the darkness of the womb, is exhorted to “come forth quickly and see the light of the sun!”150 But other incantations take this notion further and sunrise, the sun’s daily rebirth, becomes a metaphor or simile for the birth event itself—“Let the baby rise for you like the Sun-god!”151 A salient aspect to this imagery is the likening of the unborn infant with umbilical cord to a moored boat, and of the infant emerging from the cervix to the boat unmoored, slipping through opened gates.152 The cosmic setting is made plain in an incantation that states: “(from) the horizon, the woman who is about to give birth, leads the boat through water.”153 The cosmographical basis of this image comes into better focus when it is recalled that the primeval river, “creatrix of everything,” was believed to originate on the eastern horizon, its headwaters springing forth from the mythical Dukug, kur idim/šad nagbi “mountain of springs.” These waters, by virtue of their location, are imbued with the property of fate determination—“your (Lugalerra’s) river is a mighty river, the river which determines fates, the Great River at the place where the sun rises, no one can look at it.”154 According to this same hymn, this river possesed that other characteristic of the horizon, judging, for it is also known by the name Idlurugu, river of the ordeal, the river that returns the verdicts of the Apsû.155 150 ár-hiš lit-ta- a-am-ma li-mu-ra ZALAG dUTU-ši (BAM 248//KAR 196 iv 1 [Assur Compendium]; see Stol, Birth in Babylonia 64-66; N. Veldhuis, A Cow of Sîn [LOT 2; Groningen 1991] 15; idem, ASJ 11 [1989] 250); similarly, Farber Baby-Beschwörungen 34 Vorl. 1: 2. 151 [. . .] dUtu-kam hé-Ϟemϟ-ma-ra-Ϟèϟ : [. . .]-Ϟxϟ-tim li-it-ta-a -< i> (M. E. Cohen, RA 70 [1976] 138: 59-60). 152 See Stol, Birth in Babylonia 65 (BAM 248 ii 47-69), 69 (BAM 248 iii 54-iv 1); cf. the Assyrian elegy discussed in E. Reiner, Your Thwarts in Pieces, Your Mooring Rope Cut: Poetry from Babylonia and Assyria (Ann Arbor, MI 1985) 85-93. 153 Cohen, RA 70 (1976) 136: 10-11, cited below n. 162; note also: an-[úr-ra? munus-ù]-tud-a-ni gišmá-gi a [bí-ir-ri] “from the horizon, the woman who is about to give birth, leads the boat through water” ( J. van Dijk, Or 44 [1975] 66: 4). 154 íd-zu íd kalag-ga-àm íd nam-tar-ra-àm Íd-mah ki ud è igi nu-bar-re-dam (Ibbi-Sîn B, Segment A 23-24). 155 2-na-ne-ne lugal íd-da-me-eš dÍd-lú-ru-gú lú zid dadag-ga-[àm] “they (Meslamtaea and Lugalerra) are both the lords of the river, the River of the Ordeal, which clears the true man” (Ibbi-Sîn B, Segment B 2-3). As for the Apsû as the source of its verdicts, note: é-dNanše-ka Íd-lú-ru-gú lú mu-un-zalag-zalag eš-bar-kin šìr-kug ka Abzu-ta um-ta-è-a-ra . . . “the river of the ordeal in the house of Nanše cleanses a person. When the decision, the holy song, has come out of the mouth of the Abzu . . .” (Nanše Hymn 130-131; following W. Heimpel, JCS 33 [1981] 91). Cosmology is once again reflected in real-world practice, for the river at the edge of the world 221 Flowing under the auspices of the Netherworld pair Meslamtaea and Lugalerra, the cosmic river is the conduit between the Upperworld and the Apsû, the river upon whose waves Lugalerra descends to the abyss.156 These are the primordial waters of the eastern edge of the world, waters that assume a variety of mythical manifestations that draw upon either their connection with the Netherworld or the Sun-god’s mastery over this domain: mê mūti “Waters of Death” in Gilgameš, Íd-kur-ra íd-lú-gu7-gu7 “River of the Netherworld, ManEating-River” in Enlil and Ninlil,157 the Hubur, pî nārāti “Mouthof-the-Rivers” associated with Utu and Dumuzi in the Kiškanû legend,158 as well as Utu’s seven-mouthed river in Lugalbanda.159 In yet another instance of cultic reality mirroring cosmography, it was likely these mythical waters that inspired Lu’utu, the ensi of Umma, to “establish a water(course) in front (of the temple)” when he built the temple for Ereškigal, which “(faced) the place where the sun rises, where fates are determined.”160 Birth metaphors draw upon this cosmography, describing the amniotic fluid in language that evokes the impenetrable waters of Apsû, in one case comparing the amniotic fluid to the cosmic ocean—“In the ocean waters, fearsome, raging, in the far-off waters of the sea: where the little one is—his arms are bound! Inside which the eye of the sun does not bring light. Asallu i, the son of Enki, saw him.”161 Developing this image further, the unborn infant is ordeal was conducted “at dawn, when it was light” (i-na še-rim i-na na-ma-ri [CT 46, 45 iii 26; ed. W. G. Lambert, Iraq 27 (1965) 6]). 156 má-gur8 mah a ku-kur-ra u5-a gú dirig nam-lú-ùlu-ka en dLugal-er9-ra gìri-zu um-mi-gub nun kur-ra-ke4-ne ša-mu-e-ši-gam-e-dè-eš bùr-ra ud zalag ša-mu-unne-ri-ib-è “great barge riding on the flood waters, Lord Lugalerra: when you set foot in the place where all mankind is gathered, the princes of the Netherworld bow down before you; in the abyss you emit a bright light for them” (Ibbi-Sîn B, Segment A 25-29). Further, note the suggestion of Å. W. Sjöberg, OrSuec 1920 (1970-71) 160 ad 2, that the name dLugal-íd-da applies to Nergal as well as Enki-Ea. 157 Enlil and Ninlil 98-99 (cf. 113). 158 See n. 67. 159 See Woods, ZA 95 (2005) 7-45, for further discussion of dÍd and its various manifestations. 160 ki dUtu è ki nam-tar-re-da . . . gaba-ba a bí-in-gi-in (Steible NBW 2, 343: 78, 10-11 and 344: 7-8, 10). Similarly, it was the bison’s mythical and real-world association with the east that led Gudea to “set up the standard of Utu, the Bisonhead, facing sunrise where fates are determined” (igi ud è ki nam tar-re-ba šu-nir d Utu sag-alim-ma im-ma-da-si-ge [Gudea Cyl. A xxvi 3-5]). 161 i-na me-e A.AB.BA ša-am-ru-tim pa-al- u-ú-tim i-na me-e ti-a-am-tim ru-qú-ú-tim 222 christopher woods often likened to a boat laden with the precious cargo of eren wood, carnelian and lapis lazuli: “(From) the horizon the woman who is about to give birth is leading the boat through the water. Upon a boat for perfume, she has loaded perfumes. Upon a boat for erenwood, she has loaded eren-wood. Upon a boat for eren-fragrance, she has loaded eren-fragrance. (Upon) a boat of carnelian and lapis lazuli, she has loaded carnelian and lapis lazuli.”162 As we have seen, hašur and eren trees are synonymous with the Zagros, being both visual and literary symbols of the eastern horizon, while these precious stones likewise have close real-world and derived mythical163 associations with the east. But there is more to this metaphor. Central to this imagery is the description of the womb as “the quay of death”164 or as bīt ikleti “house of darkness” 165—a phrase that in other contexts serves as a poetic designation for the Netherworld: ana bīt ikleti šubat Irkalla ana a-šar e-e -ru-um ku-us-sà-a i-da-a-šu qí-ir-bi-is-sú la-a uš-na-wa-ru i-in ša-am-ši-im imu-ur-šu-ú-ma dAsal-lú-hi ma-ri dEn-ki ( J. van Dijk, Or 42 [1973] 503: 5-11; in l. 26 the fetus, e rum, is likened to a fish, dadum; translation following Stol, Birth in Babylonia 11, which in turn is based on Foster, Before the Muses 136). 162 [x an-ú]r du-da-a-ni ma-gi4 a mi-ni-ri : [i-ši ]-id ša-me-e ù er- e-tim i-na ata-lu-ki-ša ki-ma e-le-pí i-te-i-il, Ϟma šeϟ-ma-ta še-em im-mi-in-si : ki-ma e-le-ep ri-qí ri-qí ma-li-a-at, ma e-re-na-ta e-re-en im-mi-in-[si] : ki-ma e-le-ep e-re-ni e-re-na-am ma-li-[a-at], ma še-em e-re-na-ta še-em e-re-na im-mi-[in-si], ki-ma e-le-ep ri-qí ere-ni ri-qí e-re-n[a-am ma-li-a-at], ma gu-ug za-gi-na gu-ug za-gi-na im-mi-i[n-si] : ki-ma e-le-ep sa-am-tim ù uq-ni-im sa-am-t[a-am ù uq-na-am ma-li-a-at] (Cohen, RA 70, 136: 10-19; translation following the Sum. version—du-da-a-ni is for ù-tud-a-ni [ibid. 140 ad 2-9]); for further texts describing the fetus as an eren-laden boat, see Polonsky, “Rise of the Sun God” 614-15 n. 1802. Note the association of the birth boat with lapis lazuli given in a medical commentary (11N-T3): én munus ù-tu-ud-da-a-ni : e-lip-pi šá uq-na-a za-na-at “incantation for a woman giving birth: the ship laden with lapis lazuli” (M. Civil, JNES 33 [1974] 331: 1); see also the discussion of Frymer-Kensky, “Judicial Ordeal” 600-602. 163 In particular, the garden of gemstones in Gilgameš; see E.C.L. During Caspers, “In the Footsteps of Gilgamesh: In Search of the Prickley Rose”, Persica 12 (1987) 63. 164 ina KAR mu-ti ka-lat GIŠ.MÁ “at the quay of death, the boat is held back” (BAM 248//KAR 196 iii 58); see the comments of J. van Dijk, “Une incantation accompagnant la naissance de l’homme”, Or 42 (1973) 505. 165 e rum wāšib bīt ek[letim] lū tatta âm tātamar n[ūr Šamšim] “little one, who dwelt in the house of darkness—well, you are outside now, have seen the light of the sun” (W. Farber, ZA 71 [1981] 63 rev. 1-2; also Farber Baby-Beschwörungen 34; following W. Farber, “Magic at the Cradle: Babylonian and Assyrian Lullabies”, Anthropos 85 [1990] 140. Note also the expressions: āšib ekleti lā namrūti “the one who dwelt in darkness, where it is not light,” āšib ekleti binût amīlūti “inhabitant of darkness, newborn human being,” among others discussed by Farber in BabyBeschwörungen 149-151). at the edge of the world 223 bīti ša ēribūšu lā a û “to the house of darkness, the seat of Irkalla, to the house which those who enter cannot leave.”166 Although failure of the infant to successfully emerge from the womb is a de facto death sentence for both mother and child, the description, under regular conditions, nonetheless, contains a paradox, the uterus being quite literally the quay of life. This apparent contradiction, however, is resolved once the cosmographical basis of this metaphor and the paradoxical nature of both the Netherworld and the horizon, as instantiations of the phenomenon of coincidentia oppositorum, are taken into account. By what the ancients could only have taken to be a mystical process, the infant appears in the womb, gestating in complete darkness, an unknown entity of undetermined sex, existing without the benefit of the breath of life. Only upon exiting the birth canal and entering the world of the living—that is, becoming manifest after crossing the horizon—is she a living, breathing person, a known entity—Tūta-napšum “She-has-found-life” to mention a personal name that epitomizes the notion. Simply put, the womb is the Netherworld, and the infant, as the reborn sun, gestates there like the future.167 Such is the rationale that explains the figurative description of the sun at daybreak as emerging from šag4 an-na or utul šamê, phrases commonly translated, somewhat awkwardly, as “innermost heaven/heaven’s interior” and “lap of heaven” respectively,168 but are better captured by the more literal “womb of heaven,” for Utu was born in the agrun, and so, in the Netherworld.169 The womb conceived as the Netherworld accounts 166 Gilgameš VII 184-185; see George, Gilgamesh 481- 482, for discussion of the parallels in Ištar’s Descent to the Netherworld and Nergal and Ereškigal. This negative portrayal of the womb, playing upon darkness and confinement (note Or 42, 503: 8, cited above, where the baby’s arms are described as “bound”) is also captured by the Nungal hymn where the womb is likened to a jail—see M. Civil, “On Mesopotamian Jails and Their Lady Warden”, Studies Hallo 78. 167 For a similar Biblical conception, note “I was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, wrought in the nether-regions of the earth” (Psalm 139: 15). The parallel was noted by van Dijk, who added the epigraph “Quando texebar in profundis terrae” to his article in Or 42 (Frymer-Kensky “Judicial Ordeal” 612-13 ad 40); note, in particular, Frymer-Kensky’s comments in “Judicial Ordeal” 603. 168 See Heimpel, JCS 38, 130-132; for an-šag4 as the Netherworld sky, see most recently Steinkeller, Biblica et Orientalia 48, 19 n. 19 (cf. Horowitz, Cosmic Geography 247-249). 169 Hymn to Utu B 9, cited above in n. 100. Similarly note: kur ba-an-sùh-sùh gissu ba-an-lá an-usan še-er-še-er-bi im-ma-DU dUtu úr ama-ni dNin-gal-šè sag íl-la mu-un-du “the mountains are becoming indistinct as the shadows fall across 224 christopher woods for the name of the birth goddess, dLàl-har-gal-zu “expert of the Lalhar;” làl-har/gar is a poetic designation of the Apsû, the bīt nēmeqi, which evokes the mysteries and secret knowledge thought to be contained therein—ni irti/pirišti lalgar “secrets of the Lalgar.”170 Moreover, drawing again upon the scorpion’s special relationship with the horizon, it also accounts for chthonic Iš ara’s role as a mother goddess: Ištar is Iš ara during times of childbirth, while the temple to the scorpion-goddess bears the telling name, É-šag4-sur-ra “House of the Womb.”171 The Apsû is the dark, impenetrable place—the é-ku10-ku10172— where the god of creation, Enki, dwells and, most notably, from whose clay man himself is created. The comparison of the womb to the Netherworld draws upon the utter darkness, the mystical knowledge, and the promise of the future that defines the latter. And like the night, the womb is marked by a deathly, preconscious stillness. Described by one birth incantation, edil bītu uddul bābu nadû argullū ekleta imlû sūqū “the house is locked, the door is shut, the bolt is set; the streets are filled with darkness”—language that is nearly identical to that of the prayers to the Gods of the Night, so bringing us once again to divination, and the night sky’s identity with the Netherworld.173 them; the evening twilight lies over them. Proud Utu is already on his way to the bosom of his mother Ningal” (Gilgameš and Huwawa A 78-80). 170 Apsû lip ur bīt nēmeqi (4R 52 iii 34); ni irti lalgar (OIP 2, 94: 65 and 103: 32); pirišti lalgar (KAR 44 rev. 8); further, note the equation làl-gar = ap-su-u (Malku I 291). See Stol’s discussion of the goddess dLàl-har-gal-zu in Birth in Babylonia 125; for làl-gar = làl-har, see M. Civil, RA 60 (1966) 92; W. G. Lambert, AfO 17 (1954-56) 319. 171 Lambert-Millard Atra-hasīs I 304 and George Temples 144: 1024 respectively. A birth aspect is also suggested by MEE 4, 290-291: 808-809, where d AMA-ra is immediately followed by GÁxSIG7-ra = Iš- a-ra/la—see M. Krebernik, “Muttergöttin. A. I”, RlA 8 (1997) 515: § 7.7. Also possibly finding an explanation here, at least in part, is Kūbu, “a premature or stillborn child” (CAD K sub kūbu)—i.e., a fetus that has not reached full term in the womb—as a Netherworld demon under the charge of Šamaš: šap-la-a-ti m[a-a]l-ki dKù-bu dA-nun-na-ki ta-paqqid “below, in the Netherworld, you (Šamaš) assign (tasks to) the malku-demons, the Kūbu-demon (and) the Anunnaki” (Lambert BWL 126: 31, following CAD K sub kūbu mng. 2a). 172 VAS 17, 10: 9-11, 118-122. 173 Cf. bu-ul-lu-lu ru-bu-ú sí-ik-ka-t[um] še-re-tum ta-ab-ka-[a?] [ a-ab-ra-tum ni-šu-ú ša-qú-um-ma-a] pi-tu-tum ud-du-lu ba-a-[bu] “The great ones are deep in sleep. The bolts are fallen; the fastenings are placed. The crowds and people are quiet. The open gates are (now) closed” (G. Dossin, “Prières aux ‘Dieux de la Nuit’ ”, RA 32 [1935] 180, 182: 1-4; translation following Pritchard ANET 390-391 and L. Oppenheim, “A New Prayer to the ‘Gods of the Night’ ”, AnBi 12 [1959] at the edge of the world 225 The birth event naturally reaches its conclusion with the infant emerging from the birth canal and the umbilical cord being cut. And so, too, concludes its cosmic counterpart. Just as fates are cut each day as the sun emerges from the Netherworld, the infant’s fate is fixed with the cutting of the umbilical cord.174 But like the fates that are determined at daybreak, the infant’s fate is merely made manifest at birth—it has long gestated in the womb: ištu sassūrīšu šīmtum ābtum šīmassu “ever since he was (in) his (mother’s) womb a favorable destiny was determined for him,” as a letter to Nabû claims.175 Of course, there is no essential difference between the cosmic and in utero aspects of fate determination, as shown by the mother goddess, who, among her various guises, is “lady who determines destiny in heaven and earth, Nintud, mother of the gods,”176 who bears the names dNin-nam-tar-tar-re, dNin-ka-aš-bar-ra, and d Nin-ka-aš-bar-an-ki,177 and who, as Mami, is an Underworld deity, the creatrix of man in the bīt šīmti “House of Destiny”178—Mother Earth. Indeed, this elaborate tapestry, interwoven as it is with the notions of the Netherworld, sunrise, birth, and fate, is nicely illustrated by the Nungal hymn in lines that read: “My own mother, the pure one, Ereškigal, has allotted to me her divine powers. I have set up my august dais in the Netherworld, the mountain where Utu rises . . . I assist Nintud at the place of child-delivery; I know how to cut the umbilical cord and I know the favorable words when determining fates.”179 295-296). See already Farber Baby-Beschwörungen 150: §3 and Anthropos 85, 144, where a comparison is made between the language of this incanation and that of the prayers to the gods of the night. 174 E.g., dGu-la agrig zi [šu] dim4-ma-ke4 gi-dur kud-rá-a-ni nam hé-em-miíb-tar-re “let Gula, the faithful stewardess with capable hands, determine its (the baby’s) fate when cutting the umbilical cord” (van Dijk, Or 44, 57: 49-50). 175 F. R. Kraus, JAOS 103 (1983) 205: 9-10; also note: šag4 ama-mu dNinsun-ka-ta nam tar-ra sa6-ga ma-ta-è “from the womb of my mother, Ninsun, a favorable fate arose for me” (Ur-Namma C 48-49). 176 nin an ki-a nam tar-re-dè dNin-tud ama dingir-re-ne-ke4 (Gudea St. A iii 4-6). 177 An = Anum II 8-10. 178 Lambert-Millard Atra-hasīs I 249; note Krebernik, RlA 8, 516: § 7.12. See Polonsky, “Rise of the Sun God” 121-127, for further evidence concerning the mother goddess’ role in fate determination. 179 ama ugu-mu kug dEreš-ki-gal-la-ke4 me-ni ma-ra-an-ba Urugal kur dUtu è-a barag mah-mu mi-ni-ri . . . dNin-tud-e ki nam-dumu-zid-ka mu-da-an-gub-bé gi-dur kud-da nam tar-re-da inim sa6-ge-bi mu-zu (Hymn to Nungal 67-68, 71-72). 226 christopher woods List of Figures Fig. 1: Fig. 2: Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: Fig. 11: Fig. 12: Fig. 13: Fig. 14: Fig. 15: Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. 16: 17: 18: 19: Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. 20: 21: 22: 23: 24: 25: Fig. 26: Fig. 27: R. M. Boehmer, Die Entwicklung der Glyptik während der AkkadZeit (UAVA 4; Berlin 1965), pl. 33 Abb. 397. Idem, “Früheste Altorientalische Darstellungen des Wisents,” Bagh. Mitt. 9 (1978) 20 Abb. 1. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 31 Abb. 376. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 36 Abb. 427. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 36 Abb. 429. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 35 Abb. 414. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 35 Abb. 418. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 36 Abb. 426. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 36 Abb. 431b. D. Collon, Catalogue of Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals II, Akkadian—Post Akkadian—Ur III Periods (London 1982), pl. 25 no. 176. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 36 Abb. 432. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 37 Abb. 447. P. Amiet, La glyptique mésopotamienne archaïque (Paris 21980), pl. 95 no. 1246C. B. Buchanan, Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, Vol. 1: Cylinder Seals (Oxford 1966) pl. 43 no. 667a. Buchanan, Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals, pl. 43 no. 668. Delaporte Catalogue Louvre 2, pl. 90 no. 10. H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London 1939), pl. 33b. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, pl. 33e. D. M. Matthews, Principles of Composition in Near Eastern Glyptic of the Later Second Millennium B.C. (OBO Series Archaeologica 8; Freiburg/Göttingen 1990) no. 468 (= HSS 14, pl. 111 no. 270). Ward Seals 248 no. 752. E. Porada, Ancient Art in Seals (Princeton, NJ 1980) fig. II-20. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, pl. 15j. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 2 Abb. 14. Boehmer, Entwicklung der Glyptik, pl. 34 Abb. 406. L. al-Gailani Werr, Studies in the Chronology and Regional Style of Old Babylonian Cylinder Seals (BiMes 23; Malibu 1988), pl. 21 no. 9. Amiet, La glyptique mésopotamienne archaïque, pl. 91 no. 1203. al-Gailani Werr, BiMes 23, pl. 19 no. 3. at the edge of the world Figure 1 Figure 2 227 228 christopher woods Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 at the edge of the world Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 229 230 christopher woods Figure 9 Figure 10 at the edge of the world Figure 11 Figure 12 231 232 christopher woods Figure 13 Figure 14 at the edge of the world Figure 15 Figure 16 233 234 christopher woods Figure 17 Figure 18 at the edge of the world Figure 19 Figure 20 235 236 christopher woods Figure 21 Figure 22 at the edge of the world Figure 23 Figure 24 237 238 christopher woods Figure 25 at the edge of the world Figure 26 Figure 27 239